Rome loves to talk about how it will "follow the science" on something like evolution by natural selection (with a theistic evolution carve-out for us humans, of course).
It doesn't always.
Ensoulment is of course one biggie.
Then, per the header? This:
Bishop Michael Olson of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth announces the dedication of a permanent chapel which will house a first-class relic of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina who lived a life of deep humility and prayer while performing miracles.
The Saint Pio Chapel dedication will take place on September 18, 2024, at Saint Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, 1201 South Cherry Lane, Fort Worth, Texas. A first-class relic, consisting of a bandage stained with blood from the wound on Saint Pio’s side, will be on display in a reliquary at the parish./
Well, OK now.
As with John Paul II and other recent cases, the Vatican's sainthood verification process is set up to allegedly allow skeptical questioning, but the results of said questioning then get ignored.
The actual Padre Pio?
Just working off that Wiki link for starters. Stigmata are not supernatural. And such bodily changes aren't limited to Christian intense devotion. There's also the question, per Wiki, about whether he actually had the stigmata or not. And, if he did .... er, why?
There's also the fact that the Vatican itself was skeptical of him for some number of years. He wasn't fully rehabilitated until Pope Paul VI.
Add in, per the book "Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age," that Pio himself, per an uncovered letter, once asked for carbolic acid, which can, of course, be used to create "stigmata."
Now, to world-class skeptic Joe Nickell. He notes that things like "bilocation" claims are all anecdotal. Ditto on claims of healings, which, if they happened, would be easily explained by psychological placebo effect anyway. (See "Rasputin, Grigorii" and "Tsarevitch Alexei.") And, he notes that others have faked stigmata — and later confessed in at least some cases.
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