Blessed my Father who survived WWII.

It is clear that some of the posters are in European Christian environments and have never lived in a Muslim country in their life. I have. Many of the postings are out of point. I wish the editors or webmaster edited them to fit the title of the article.
To answer those posting below who seem alarmed that Pope John Paul 2 kissed the Koran. In a Muslim country, this is seen as a sign of great respect. It says, "although we have different revealed sacred texts I respect yours". If it saved one Christian life in Muslim countries it is worth it! It shows respect between Christians and Muslims. It is part of inter-religious dialogue which that Pope was so keen on. Period. Please show some common sense. Where is the fault? I fail to see one in all the diatribe.

JP II kissed the Koran: http://www.traditioninactio...

I don't think Padre Pio would approve of Assisi with false religions and a buddha on the altar, or for JP II being the first pope to go into a synagogue, Kiss the Koran, etc. See more at: https://www.facebook.com/Ca...

What a load of rubbish and completely false...the headline.... Its make believe journalism and completely made up story to fit the page when there is no news? Padre Pio's close Capuchin colleagues were well aware of his "stigmata" and the pain it caused him. Besides the "stigmata" was fake. Caused by rubbing carbolic acid on the skin of the hands and feet until they bled. It was completely phoney and has done great damage to the Capuchin order.

What rubbish you write! Padre Pio's stigmata were not fake! His stigmata were medically and scientifically investigated on many an occasion, and it was proved that they were not self inflicted, and there was no medical explanation for their existence, why they bled, never healed and never got infected!

These days nobody is 100% sure of anything. If the Pope kissed the Korean, what is the big deal, he is a man of peace and trying to emulate peace through what he practices in a deep love of Jesus, why all the speculation of how good or bad it was. Our lives on earth today reflect on how good WE ARE and HOW well and LOVING WE CARE. This faith today is about our behavior. If you didn't think he was strong enough, go and do better, be a better person today and try and deliver Jesus; message as is written and the Popes or saints. Its the living that need to be converted not the dead, God bless you all for today, Padraig

He probably kissed more than one Korean, especially if they were babies.

the "answer" of St. Padre Pio to Pope John Paul II was the answer of our Lord Jesus Christ to St. Bernard at Clairvaux, France as printed in the Lord of Pardon prayer phamphlet under VENERATION OF THE WOUNDS (On the Shoulder of Christ)

"It is related in the annals of Clairvaux that St. Bernard asked our Lord which was His greatest unrecorded suffering, and Our Lord answered: "I had on My Shoulder, while I bore My Cross on the Way of Sorrows, a grievous Wound, which was more painful than the others, and which is not recorded by men." *** St. Bernard died in 1153. *** This report by Mary O'Regan seems to be confused.

I had heard just the opposite; Padre Pio
DID predict that Fr
Karol Wojtyla would become pope and that fact was used as an evidence for the
Canonization of Padre Pio.

I read in one of the articles about St. Padre Pio and his friends that it was Pope John Paul I and not Pope John Paul II

Devotion to the Holy Wounds mentions especially the shoulder wound causing the most suffering. Ann Ball's book on Holy Names of Jesus

What statement did Padre Pio make pertaining to the reigning Pope when he died ? Fr. Luigi Villa told the world yet few listened.

I believe EWTN foundress Mother Angelica had a special devotion to the Shoulder wound of Christ, upon which he bore His cross. I also believe i read somewhere--St. Faustina's Diary or the St. Gertrude's Pieta Prayer book, perhaps--that Jesus Himself revealed this wound as one the faithful rarely think about. I can imagine that bearing the huge weight of the cross on a shoulder scourged to the bone would be excruciating.
By the way: what was the source of this incident? Who did John Paul II relate this conversation to?

When did a wound of he shoulder become part of the stigmata? My understanding is that the five wounds were: one in each hand/wrist, one in each foot/ankle and one in the side.
One would not consider a shoulder wound part of the stigmata - were have I gone wrong?

http://vaticaninsider.lasta...

It has been scientifically proven that the man of the shroud is a hoax.

There's strong physical evidence that the Shroud is legitimate. It supported by X-ray images which show the stains go through the cloth, they are not drawings to etchings, and by the stains on the cloth match the stains on the ancient and authentic Sudarium of Oviedo - that's the head cloth placed over Christ's head / face when his corpse was lowered from the Cross. We know that the Sudarium is very likely genuine because we can trace its patrimony back nearly 2000 years, to Syria and Palestine = pre Byzantium Levant.

The Sudarium of Oviedo, and its blood stained image matches perfectly the head stains on the Shroud of Turin. Furthermore the pulmonary edema stains on the Sudarium also match perfectly the pulmonary stains on the Shroud of Turin. So how can that be if the Shroud's a fake? How can these two separate cloths match perfectly on over 45 different spots around the face and mouth if the Shroud's a fake? This match between shroud and head cloth gives pretty strong evidence that, 1800+ years old, BOTH clothes were wrapped around the same body. That corpse is highly likely to be that of Jesus Christ in 33A.D. How else and why else would such ancient death robes have been kept safe and venerated by early Christians in the first few centuries, if they were not legitimate?

Likewise, even using modern technology, no one has been able to precisely duplicate the markings on the Shroud (so apparently, 13th Century forgers had means that modern technology can't replicate, right?). Also, x-ray imaging shows that the image has "depth" - that is, that it is darker or lighter according to how tightly it was pressed against the body, and can, in effect, be used to reconstruct a 3-D image. That sort of knowledge of "depth perspective" was unknown to artists in the 13th Century.

I'm not saying there's conclusive, indubitable proof that the Shroud is legitimate. But none of the commonly-cited "debunkings" hold water.

Decades ago they thought they had proven it was from the 13th century or something but it turned out the samples they tested were taken from patching done on the shroud after it was burned in a fire in the 13th century. So they had to retract their "findings". Later carbon dating from the shroud showed it to be from the time of Christ.

Where Doc - afford some evidence.

Doc, have you been listening to gossip? Just the opposite is true. Please update your information.

wrong.

Dear people, the book that JPll kissed is a Christian Bible "IN ARABIC"! Please get that one straight once an for all!

I don't think Padre Pio would approve of Assisi with false religions and a buddha on the altar, or for JP II being the first pope to go into a synagogue, etc. See more at: https://www.facebook.com/Ca...

Really? That's great. Because our Catholic friends in Indonesia were very sad if it was a Koran. Meaning that St. JPII acknowledged that satanic verses..

I have been very troubled by this. Do you have a website or book quote to support this?

John Paul II watched more people leave the Catholic church than at the time of Protestant reformation. You kissed the Koran. The same book that Muslim used to kill Catholics. I am not surethe Pope spent enough with Saint Pio.

Thankfully he didn't kiss the Koran, that is a misunderstanding that is still going. It was a Bible in the Arabic language.

I don't think Padre Pio would approve of Assisi with false religions and a buddha on the altar, or for JP II being the first pope to go into a synagogue, See more at: https://www.facebook.com/Ca...

It seems the Pope did indeed kiss the Koran, though he may have kissed it out of a mistaken impression that it was the right thing to do for Iraqi culture for a gift received. Here is a really good article on this. http://jimmyakin.com/2006/0...

You are incorrect. He did kiss the Koran. EWTN clarifies this and refers to this article. See article http://www.fides.org/Englis...

Pope John Paul II DID the right thing. The Church promotes Inter Religious understanding and relationship. This is to win the GOODWILL of people.

If a man has something BAD in him, should we hate him because of it? Does it mean that there is nothing good in him?

If there is something bad in Koran, the holy book of Muslims, that is not what the Pope reached out to own as GOOD. But in the Koran there is the God of Abraham, our own God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

We all have good and bad in us. It us how we act that makes the difference. The Koran only came from hell certainly not heaven Per the example set by isis. The popes' friends will think he selling out by kissing the Koran and his enemies will use it against the faith. So there is no win here. Very stupid.

That link is bad. Do you have a good one?

I don't have one. There are a lot of information out there on it just Google 'kissing the koran'. It is definitely not a Arabic Bible, it a Koran.

What is your source? I have a picture of him kissing the Koran on web site. www.GodofIsraelisReal.com

Nice. That's a link to the home page. Can you point a little more directly to your article?

It's on http://www.godofisraelisrea... 3/4 of the way down the page, but whether it's an Islamic Koran or Arabic Bible??

To be fair, people were leaving a bit before The Second Vatican, which seemed to escalate with subsequent Popes. When a third? of the seminarians suddenly asked to leave, Pope Paul VI said the 'smoke of Satan' had entered the Church...As for kissing the Koran, JP2 has done much to improve relations between other religions. One might speculate his public respect for Islam may have SAVED lives, since Muslims tend to riot and kill people when their religion is disrespected. I'm not sure St.JP2 examined Padre too closely, though many have, but I'm sure Padre did confide in JP2.

Saving lives is good but to what end? We all eventually die. Now most non-Catholics believe converting is not important because of his example. The pope respects and therefore believes other religions are just as good so why convert? This is what priests in the trenches hear from possible converts.

To remain loyal or not to one's baptism is a personal decision and can not be blamed on anybody including the Pope.

Excellent sermon on the canonizations of John XXIII and JP II: https://soundcloud.com/stmi...

Padre Pio may have indirectly indicated that Fr. Karol Wojtyla would be Pope in as much as he told him about his shoulder hurting the most of all the wounds. The Cross represented the sins of man which hurt Jesus the most. St. John Paul II would one day carry the problems (sins) of the world on his shoulder.

Those are just stories! Stories of saints are rather flowery! Have you ever read a BAD profile of a saint?
If you really analyse them they never happened. But its a great story nonetheless that Padre PIo predicted Wyotyla would be Pope. That is just like interpreting Nostradamus prophecies. You have to read them backwards AFTER they happened, in which cause they are predicters of NOTHING.

Notice in the Padre Pio story they do not say:-
1. In which year they met;
2. whether it was a planned meeting or their paths just crossed in a church, retreat or on a pilgrimage;
3. How long was the meeting;
4. Where it took place;
Its all very dodgy when important facts are left out, don't you think?
I suggest you take everything the church tells you with a pinch of salt because there is always a motive and hidden agenda there.

Your illustrating my point exactly Warren. Retrospective speculation, starting from a groundless assumption to lead to where we want it to go. I think we are on much firmer ground to speculate that Padre Pio did not predict Fr Karol Wojtyla would become Pope because he did not know, rather than build up some story that Padre Pio knew ( how do we know he knew ?) but for some mystical reason decided not to tell. Indeed why does Padre Pio or JP2 need this storey? it undermines them not strengthens them (well it does if we take them seriously).

I don't buy the 'legend' of Padre Pio 'telling' Fr. Karol Wojtyla that he would be pope one day - I heard it all before, when I've been reading books and watching videos and DVDs about him down the years.
Perhaps Padre Pio was talking to the then Fr Karol Wojtyla as more than brother to brother; he saw something more than a meeting of peers which is what gave him the opportunity to confide in him about the awful wound on his shoulder ... exactly where Christ bore his cross.
At least Padre Pio was obedient to his superiors when he was prohibited from carrying out his priestly work in public for some years.
There were people - including Gemelli and Pope (now Saint) John XXIII - who were not enthusiastic about him or the attention he was receiving amongst other things.
That's not unusual in the run of things when it comes to treading the road to sainthood.
It's lovely to think of Ss John XXIII and John Paul II and Pio of Pietrelcina standing before Almighty God side by side!

Excerpt: "Decades later, when Fr Wojtyla became the Holy Father, people speculated as to whether Padre Pio had told him that he would be Pope. Pope John Paul II clarified that Padre Pio did not tell him that he would be Pope."

This article does not say that Padre Pio did so. Read carefully. What he did do was ask the friars to save a "thank you" note from Fr Wojtyla.