When the Italian monk Padre Pio was canonised on 16 June 2002, the ceremony was greeted with as much fanfare as if Italy had won the World Cup. The Catholic adoration of this new saint puts him on a par with the world’s holiest and has won him more devotees than Francis of Assisi or Bernadette of Lourdes. Some eight million visitors each year throng the little village of San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy where the friar lived; only the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico attracts more pilgrims. Without a doubt the most popular saint-to-be made in modern times, the miracle-working Padre Pio was also the most controversial.

In perhaps the most extraordinary volte-face ever performed by the Vatican, its official line about Pio changed from regarding him as a psychopathic fraudster suspected of fornicating in the confessional to agreement that this simple friar from Apulia was a paragon of virtue so blessed with the power of God that just a touch of his cloak would suffice to cure disease.

Christened Francesco Forgione, he was born in the village of Pietrelcina on 25 May 1887.