Alessio Vinci: Thousands attend canonization

CNN Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci

VATICAN CITY (CNN) -- Hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic pilgrims flocked to the Vatican on Sunday for the canonization of Padre Pio, the beloved monk who is said to have borne signs of the stigmata.

CNN Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci covered the event from St. Peter's Square.

VINCI: It is an incredibly hot day here in Rome, with temperatures well above 90 degrees. But nevertheless, a quarter million people gathered here in St. Peter's Square ... and squares around St. Peter's to witness first-hand this extraordinary event here in Rome today: the canonization of Padre Pio, an Italian friar believed to be a man capable of producing miracles.

Father Pio was a man who dedicated most of his life to prayer and devotion to Jesus Christ, who in the words of most of his followers suffered most of his life for the good of other people.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Pope John Paul II declares Padre Pio, who was known for bearing the stigmata and performing miracles, a saint. CNN's Alessio Vinci reports (June 16) Play video The road to sainthood (June 14) Play video   RESOURCES IN-DEPTH: Pope John Paul II

But to his followers, Father Pio was not just a simple friar. As I said, (he was) a man capable of performing miracles, healing sick people, appearing sometimes in two different locations at the same time.

But what made Padre Pio perhaps the most controversial and renowned figure in the Italian Catholic Church is the fact that he was bearing the stigmata -- the wounds of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, when those wounds appeared on his hand and feet and side when he was 17 years old, a lot of those people in San Giovanni Rotondo, where he was based in southern Italy, believed he was really a truly remarkable man, those stigmata making him the most famous person at the time in the Catholic Church.

Also, the Vatican looked at him for many, many years with suspicion. As a matter of fact, they basically put him in confinement for several years, prohibiting him from performing open-air masses to people who flocked by the thousands every week, every month to San Giovanni Rotondo.

Eventually Pope Paul VI rehabilitated him, and in 1999 Pope John Paul II beatified him. And here, in front of 250,00 people, Padre Pio is finally, to most of his followers, a real saint.