Padre Pio was a devoted priest from Italy. As a child, he devoted his life to God, and was ordained a priest in 1910. During his childhood, Pio was subject to various illnesses, and at one point, a malignant tumor that was removed and he was completely cured after only two sessions of radiotherapy.

He became famous for his stigmata and was named a saint after his death by Pope John Paul II. He claimed to have been suffering from open wounds in his hands signifying jesus being nailed to the cross by his hands, which was identified as stigmata. He is the only known priest to have suffered form stigmata. He also claimed to have a number of gifts from God, these were :-

• ability to read hearts
• levitate 
• gift of tongues
• healing
• gift of conversions
• bilocation
• prophecy
• miracles
• ability to abstain beyond man's natural powers from both sleep and nourishment
• multiplication of food
• grace to see his guardian angel 
• fragrance from wounds

The signs of his stigmata lasted for just over fifty years and the wounds never got infected and apparently smelled of a nice fragrance.

People are only canonized to sainthood if the Church recognizes one of their miracles carried out during their lifetimes, and of Padre Pio's, the Church recognized two:

-  the curing of an 11-year-old boy who was in a coma;

-  the medically inexplicable curing of a woman with lung disease.

There is a considerable amount of controversy surrounding Padre Pio.