Padre Pio (Not One Of San Diego Padres) Poem by Joe Rosochacki

I was born of Polish Catholic ancestry,
I attended thirteen years of Catholic Schools;
The schools were Our Lady Queen of Apostles and St. Florian High.
But it would never have dawned on me:
The Roman Catholic fascination with mutilation and Death.

There are two distinct areas of thought;
the American-Catholic experience
And that of the European Catholic.
Back in grade school,
we were taught that the altar had to be consecrated by having a Relic
-entombed in stone via a glass casing to render the altar sacred by a bishop.
The relic could be something such a hair from a saint,
the wood splinter of the cross,
or a piece of cloth worn by a saint.
I was slightly misinformed about menial relics.
I had the morbid opportunity to venture into Italy where Catholicism is strong,
Hence Roman Catholics.
What I saw is not what I learned in the USA,
it does matter.
In St. Peter’s Basilica,
the magnificent embodiment of Renaissance Italian art and architecture, there were side altars, besides the main altar.
These altars were constantly in use.
There were, I believe, six or eight of them.
There was a Mass performed on one of them 24 hours a day;
some delivered in Latin.
Their relic were dead popes,
at times enclosed in a marble sarcophaguses(?):
But sometimes they were in a vacuum sealed glass enclosure.
You can witness their somewhat decomposing faces without gold death masks.
Yet the priest says Mass,
- over these perfectly preserved posthumous Pontifical people.
Traveling with Detroit Anthropological Society,
We ventured onto Siena.
St. Dominic’s Cathedral was the heart of the Siena.
St. Dominic’s was not finished,
-either because of the bubonic plague or
The city simply ran out of money.
In the end, the construction did falter.
St. Catherine of Siena is their patron saint.
I was shocked when I saw the relic on a side altar;
Her glass enclosed head.
- Need I say more?
The altar was equipped with her leather breast binders,
And cat-o-nine self-flagellation instrument,
Along with, hold on to your seats,
her cut off finger stuck on a bill spindle.
I read that she slept on a rock for a pillow,
-she was said to have stigmatas.
Now Am I Crazy Or What?
What is this; Opus Dei?
Here we have a woman who sleeps upon a rock for a pillow,
subjects her body to torturous conditions while binding her breasts,
whipping herself till she bleeds,
and in the end gets her head and finger cut off to be put on display all within the Vatican’s reach.
The nuns never told me about this;
I wonder if they knew.
So that brings us to Padre Pio.

Padre Pio, not one of the San Diego Padres,
I doubt they would draft him,
Being in his condition and all,
But yet he is gawked at by his fans.
Pretty soon they will be perhaps carving up his remains
to send the relics,
To future churches that will be consecrated by placing the relic in the altar stone.
I wonder how this will affect his resurrection or rapture.

“I’m in pieces, bits and pieces” by The Dave Clark Five, keeps on playing in my mind.

So Padre Pio,
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
(Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.) , NOT! ! ! ! ! !
Not peace sublime,
The Vatican may have a world tour for you,
You may go in the Far East,
Africa,
South America,
Central America,
North America
And Australia;

all at the same time.

(3-5-2008)