On September 23, the Catholic Church remembers Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, often known as Padre Pio, with dozens of festivities across Italy. It is the day he died in San Giovanni Rotondo in 1968, which the Church regards as his “birth into Heaven". He was born in Pietrelcina (Benevento) in 1887. More than thirty years after his death, John Paul II beatified him on May 2, 1999. Three years later, on June 16, 2002, the same Pope declared him a Saint. Padre Pio is one of the most popular religious personalities of all time, and he is the focal point of a devotion that has few equals anywhere. Even during his lifetime, he was the subject of immense popular adulation, thanks in part to the emergence of stigmata on his body beginning in 1918 and devotees' claims that he was a miracle worker. However, he was also the subject of severe criticism in certain ecclesiastical and medical-scientific circles.