The following story was carried on the cover of the Travel section of Mail Today‘s Sunday paper. Mail Today is Delhi’s third-largest paper and fastest growing daily, which recently launched an edition in London. (Inside section here) 

Padre Pio is virtually a living presence in Angelina Jadanza and Cardone Anjelo’s San Giovanni apartment. | Photo by Neha Tara Mehta.

ANGELINA JADANZA’s third-floor apartment on Via S. Chiara, San Giovanni Rotondo, a charming drive away in her green Fiat from the church of Padre Pio — an anonymous friar who shot to cult status as the “living image of Christ” — resembles a shrine. Porcelain images of Jesus, Virgin Mary and Fatima embellish every nook and cranny of her house, which has a luminous quality to it in the warm spring light.

Padre Pio, who passed away nearly half a century ago, is a virtual living presence in the apartment Jadanza, 64, shares with her husband and twin sister, a nun. He is there is watercolor on the walls, in brass on the bookshelves and in carefully-preserved blood-stained gloves and clipped finger nails in the drawers.

Padre Pio is a cottage industry in San Giovanni Rotondo, selling everything from cigarette lighters to keychains and hotel rooms. | Photo by Neha Tara Mehta.

Padre Pio’s spiritual ascendance began in 1918, when as a Capuchin monk in the sleepy, remote town of San Giovanni Rotondo in Southern Italy, he reluctantly reported five wounds on his body — just when Italy was counting its dead in the World War I, and San Giovanni was fighting a Spanish flu epidemic. In the years to come, Padre Pio would be catapulted into the limelight – both as a miracle healer and as a fraudster with fake stigmata. The Vatican settled the matter by canonizing him in 2002.

The friar’s five wounds changed the fate of San Giovanni Rotondo forever. The obscure town that few had heard of now draws over 4 million pilgrims every year. A gigantic and grandiose church designed by Renzo Piano, on Time magazine’s 2006 list of the most influential people in the world, stands testament to the large crowds – and wealth that Padre Pio has created for San Giovanni Rotondo.

Padre Pio is a cottage industry here. You are as likely to run into the saint’s devotees here as his life-size statues. He is streaming out of a 24-hour cable TV station that is watched by viewers across four continents. He is there in the dozens of souvenir shops that line the sloping streets — on key chains, photo frames, necklaces, paintings – always with that piercing gaze. He even lights your cigarettes here, quite literally, with Padre Pio lighters being quite the rage.

The saint that Jadanza, 66, lovingly nurtures in her home, is also reportedly present in less likely quarters – the home of scandal magnet Silvio Berlusconi. But for Jadanza, Padre Pio goes beyond the euros he gets into San Giovanni Rotondo and his celebrity stature. She met him just six months before he passed away in 1968 as a 20-year-old weary from a long journey from her home town, Pietrelcina, 92 km away, also the birth place of Padre Pio.

In San Giovanni Rotondo, you are as likely to run into life-size statues of Padre Pio as his pilgrims. | Photo by Neha Tara Mehta.

“As soon as I met him, he said, ‘It was such a long journey,’” remembers Jadanza. “He knew without us telling him what we had been through,” she adds, bringing out the family’s most carefully preserved possession: the saint’s trademark half-gloves stained with blood and pieces of scabs in a tightly sealed bag.

Jadanza never returned home – something which the saint had predicted, she says. With no medical training, she was taken on as a nurse in Casa Sollievo della Soffrenza, a hospital established by the saint. In founding the hospital, Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto writes, Padre Pio had headed “not from science towards miracles but from miracles toward science”. The hospital was to shape Jadanza’s professional and personal life – she met her husband Cardone Anjelo, who worked in the research department of the hospital, while at work.

The interiors of the church dedicated to Padre Pio by Renzo Piano. The walls of the church are lined with pictures of Padre Pio, Jesus and Saint Francis -- all of whom received the stigmata. | Photo by Neha Tara Mehta.

“I am so happy that I found a religious husband,” she says, looking at Anjelo, who sits perfectly framed against a Padre Pio portrait.

Jadanza’s last meeting with the saint was just four just days before he died. “He told me I had to continue to carry the cross and see Jesus in every patient.”

She adhered – delivering 30 children in the maternity ward, but never having one of her own. “These are my 30 children,” says Jadanza, now retired, pointing towards a large picture frame which stands out on walls covered with Padre Pio paraphernalia.

She brings out a platter overflowing with freshly baked cookies and tiny cups of afternoon espresso to go with the stories about her life lived in faith. Both she and Anjelo insist that we take the cookies with a light sugary glaze on top.

As we comment on how delicious the cookies were, Anjelo smiles, saying, “She had left them in the oven a little longer than she normally does.”

The chapel is said to have been strategically located in the center of the Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza Hospital. | Photo by Hoda Emam.

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO — Dominating the mountaintop of this pilgrimage town in southern Italy is a vast hospital with commanding views of the verdant Italian countryside and the Adriatic Sea. The name of the hospital is Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza (Home of the Relief of the Suffering) and its location is no accident. “We think the view helps in the recovery process for patients,” said a doctor as he pointed out one tall rectangular window in the patient social area of the hospital.

The hospital was founded in 1956 by Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, a Capuchin friar who for decades had been known as a healer and miracle worker. In 2002, 34 years after his death, Pope John Paul II declared Padre Pio a saint of the Catholic Church.

While millions had made this trip before us, we were coming not as pilgrims but as journalists. We had heard much about Pio before arriving in Italy and even read a book in preparation. The book, written by Sergio Luzzatto, is called “Padre Pio: Miracle and Politics in a Secular Age.”

Luzzatto writes about the unusual nature of a faith healer establishing a hospital. “Apart from its impact on the health of the population, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza was a first in Italian and European religious life because its founder was after all, a miracle healer.” Luzzatto goes on to write, “Since the 19^th century, the effort to bridge the gap between scientific explanations and miracle cures had come entirely from the medical side… where miracle cures were examined using modern symptomological and statistical techniques. With Casa Sollievo, however, Pio headed in the other direction, not from science toward miracles but from miracles toward science.”

We were greeted at the hospital like visiting celebrities. The hospital’s administrator and the heads of several departments, many in their white coats, met us on the front steps. We were given a tour of the wards and public areas and stopped also to see the chapels of the hospital. “No matter how you feel about Padre Pio, it’s amazing that one man can be behind a legacy like this, it’s so rare for a little town to have something to show for itself and this hospital is attracting people from Europe,” said Nathan Vickers.

At the center of the hospital is the chapel. The pearl-colored walls of the sanctuary made the small rectangular room look larger than its actual size. As we sat on the brown benches listening to the tour guide, the sunlight shined through the mostly blue and brown stained glass behind the altar.

Both inside and outside the hospital, pictures of Pio abound.  He is depicted as a slightly hunched-over, fair-skinned man with a short white beard and dark eyebrows. The focus of much interest are his hands, which were said to be marked by stigmata, wounds like those suffered by Christ.

In 1956, Pio inaugurated Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza, which quickly became the center of the town where shrines, businesses and homes began to populate the once barren city. The San Giovanni Rotondo Catholic Shrine, which sits across from the entrance to the hospital is said to be evidence that the healing spirit and body cannot be divided, welcomes around four million tourists and pilgrims annually. The hospital alone has over 2,500 staff members with just over one thousand hospital beds.

In a city where the Catholic faith and human health are mutually important, the tensions between modern medicine and faith are played out. Domenico Crupi, the vice president and general director of the hospital, said that even though abortion is legal in Italy, no abortions are performed at Sollievo Della Sofferenza. No contraceptives are disbursed either, he said. “We don’t do abortions but the state doesn’t tell us what we can and cannot do.”

While other Italian hospitals may be under government pressure to conform, Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza has a special status among Italian hospitals. The medical center is supported and run by the Vatican and often receives substantial donations from adherents of Pio as well as patrons. In fact, it is said that even at the time of his death, Pio was resentful of the Italian bureaucracy. According to Bernard Ruffin’s, “Padre Pio: The True Story,” in 1948 the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitations Administration gave 400 million lira (approx. $738,607 USD) for the construction of the hospital. However, the money was paid to the Italian government. “To Padre Pio’s immense rage and stupefaction, the Italian government passed only two hundred fifty million lire to the Casa,” wrote Ruffins. Pio considered the act by the government as robbery.

On our visit, we saw how the Catholic faith is integrated into the treatment. We met a Capuchin monk who is the head of the chaplains in the hospital. His welcoming smile grabbed the attention of many of us, prompting everyone to put down their cameras and listen as the petite fair skinned man with a long white beard and long brown tunic told us about his hospital duties. On one floor, we saw a nun in a white ankle-length dress singing prayers and swinging a rosary as she paced through the halls. As the tour continued through the hospital, Brandon Gates stopped to take a few photos of the nun. “It was interesting to see the her walk down the hall praying for the residents in the hospital, simply because people tend not to focus so much on religion when they are in a hospital,” said Brandon “Usually there is a conflict between religion and science but at this hospital there was the merging of the two.”

Neha Tara Mehta enjoying the bus ride to San Giovanni. | Photo by Nathan Vickers.

One hour into our trip from Naples to San Giovanni the bus pulled over behind a gas station for a small surprise celebration. With hills of deep-green sprawled out behind and a cool breeze, we all gathered in a circle. Professor Goldman glowed as he told us that Francesca Trianni, our wonderful teaching assistant, had been accepted into the Columbia School Graduate School of Journalism for the 2012-2013 school year. Professor Goldman popped the cork off a bottle of champagne and we gave a toast to Francesca and to an upcoming year as a sleepless-workaholic journalism student.

Francesca, who is from the north of Italy and graduated from Columbia College a year ago, got the news when we woke up earlier that morning in Naples. She recalled that she immediately called her parents and grandparents. “My mom was really proud and started crying, my dad was totally different and said he had no doubt about me getting in.” Francesca added that she has never been this excited to learn and challenge herself.

As we set off back on our route to San Giovanni, the bus drove by hills with wind turbines perched on top, grapevine farms and ranch style estates. Through the bumpy and winding roads, each student had a little bit of advice to offer Francesca. I too found myself giving recommendations on how to manage the program. This made me think, how did everyone else find out about his or her admittance? Who accompanied them? Where were they?

Andrea Palatnik and Hoda Emam on one of our many bus rides across Italy. | Photo by Trinna Leong.

I first asked Sarah Laing about her Columbia acceptance moment. Laing recalled being in Australia and a student at the University of Melbourne when she received the email from Columbia with the decision. “I was with two friends and we had just had a delicious breakfast,” Laing said.  “We were working on our honors thesis and while they were talking, I opened my email and saw a subject line of ‘Your decision is ready’,” Laing said. As Laing’s schooling in Melbourne was coming to an end, she was looking for the next step in her life. “I opened the letter and see that it says congratulations,” Laing said, “and I turn to my friend said can you please read this because I think I just got into Columbia!” “I figured if I come out with a degree from an Ivy League school, it wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Laing said.

We were now in the Puglia region, about 20 minutes from San Giovanni and I asked Anam Siddiq her story. “I was just checking my email randomly and then I saw the email and I started freaking out, I asked my mom to come next to me,” Siddiq recalled. “I went and prayed before I opened up the email and my mom sat there and waiting for me, so I finally open it and I whisper under my breath and say, ‘I got in!’” Siddiq laughed as she said her mother became excited for her acceptance only after learning that Columbia is an Ivy League school. “I called my dad in China and told him, he started crying and said you have made me so proud,” Siddiq said.

At this point in our trip, ears popping, we were ascending the mountain San Giovanni. Teresa Mahoney recalled that just a year ago she was working at a startup biotech company in her native Portland, Ore. “My boss secretly didn’t want me to get in [to Columbia] because she wanted me to work for them,” said Mahoney. Columbia was the only school Mahoney had applied to. “I was checking my email at work when I got the email, I knew the response would make or break my future in journalism,” said Mahoney. “It’s funny how it’s a such a big deal at the beginning,” Mahoney said, “during the application process it’s like winning the lottery, like my whole life problems would be solved but then there is a lot of work ahead.”

As for me, well the day I found out, my parents were both in the living room in our home in Texas, watching TV. After opening the acceptance letter, I sat staring at the computer repeatedly saying, ‘oh my goodness.’ At this point my parents had run up next to me expecting the worst since they had no idea what I was staring at on the computer screen. When I showed them the letter, my dad began to clap and my mom’s eyes filled with tears, she said: “I told you, all you had to do was believe and you would get in.”

I experienced the best cappuccino ever at Piazza Navona. | Photo by Hoda Emam.

ROME — We’ve been here for several days now and I’ve yet to see a twenty something in Italy walking with a cup of coffee in hand. It seems that for Italians, drinking a coffee is not a to-go culture but a two-minute business. There is no sipping on a 20-ounce cup of Joe all afternoon. Rather in most cases the experience consists of walking up to the counter at a Trattoria, placing your order and listening to the whizzing and crackling noises from the cappuccino machine. Within seconds, a tiny cup of espresso sits steaming before me. Little conversation is made with my neighbor or server behind the bar. In fact, the waiter many times waits in front of me peering into my eyes as a sign for me to hurry so that he can tend to the next customer.

In the past few days I have learned not to sip on my cappuccino, but rather, draw back the warm drink, pay the usual 2 Euro and be on my way.

The taste of the coffee is out of this world and my taste buds want to relish every bit of the flavor. I’m not sure if it’s the experience of drinking coffee in what seems to be an Alice and Wonderland style teacup or, perhaps, the silky smooth taste of the thick creamy foam swirled on top. Nevertheless, if there is one thing I am taking back to the U.S., it’s the reminder of the delightful taste of Italian cappuccino, in addition to two boxes of the finest coffee from a local grocery store. Somehow, I don’t think it will taste as good back home. There’s something about Rome that makes the coffee better.