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| Padre Pio and Dr Sanguinetti deep in conversation |
Dr Sanguinetti was a medical doctor, a convert to Catholicism and one of Padre Pio’s most trusted friends. And the good doctor was witness to an astonishing miracle where a dead baby was brought back to life.
A devout mother had a six month old baby who was in such poor health that he was near death. She decided to take a long, difficult train ride to Padre Pio. There was a risk in that the journey would be rough on her baby who would die by inches on the way, but so full of confidence was the mother in Padre Pio’s intercessory powers with God, that she set off for San Giovanni Rotondo.
When the mother arrived at the church, she was clutching a wicker suitcase and joined the line of ladies who were waiting for Padre Pio to hear their confession. Her baby was nowhere to be seen. She was in great distress and wailed loudly. When it was her turn, she approached Padre Pio and opened the wicker suitcase, and confronted him with a dead baby swaddled in tattered old clothes. The baby had perished on the way to San Giovanni and in desolation, the mother had hidden the baby’s lifeless body in the suitcase, and pressed on, holding onto hope that Padre Pio would pray for a miracle.
Now, here she was, holding out her deceased child to Padre Pio. Pio was cut to the heart. He took the dead baby into his arms, lifted his eyes to heaven and prayed. Some moments later, he handed the baby back to his mummy, saying, “stop screaming, can’t you see your baby is only sleeping?” The mother gazed at her baby and saw that he was breathing without difficulty and was sleeping peacefully. She cried tears of joy.
Dr Sanguinetti was watching the sequence of events, and later said that if the child had been alive when he was put in the wicker suitcase, that the little one would have definitely suffocated, so there was no question that the baby had been dead at the moment his mother presented him to Padre Pio.
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