Padre Pio's healing power felt by local Catholic

photo courtesy of Rosaelia Nevarez

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Rosaelia Nevarez is shown with Padre Paolo, who gave Saint Pio his last rites.

SALT LAKE CITY - The last time Rosaelia Nevarez was diagnosed with cancer, her doctors weren't optimistic about her chances for recovery. She needed an emergency operation, they said, and suggested she call her family to her hospital bedside.

During the operation, she dreamed of the Virgin Mary. "She said, ‘You will be OK. You don't have to be afraid," Nevarez said. Appearing with Mary was Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, a saint Nevarez had heard of but didn't know much about.

Though a Catholic, Nevarez had left the Church several times, "but my faith has always been that without God there is no life," she said.

About eight years ago her brother suggested that she see a movie about Padre Pio. She never did see the movie, but the saint's name kept popping up, and while visiting her sister in Texas she found the book "Padre Pio the Stigmatist" by Charles Mortimer Carty.

"Reading his story, I would feel what he was feeling," Nevarez said. "I was totally absorbed in Padre Pio and our Blessed Mother."

She continued to pray, and "One day I asked, ‘Padre Pio, how do I become your spiritual child? I want so much, but I am not worthy.' The tears would just flow while I was talking and my heart wanted to burst and it was always on fire."

The next day, she read in the book, "If you want to be my spiritual child, come and see me."

With a little research, she learned that the saint, who died in 1968, and been exhumed and his body was on display in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy.

She made preparations to go to see him, but faced several hurdles; among them, she hurt her ankle, her mother became ill and she had difficulties getting a passport.

Finally, however, on May 6, 2009 she and a friend landed in Italy.

When she first arrived at the crypt and saw the top of the saint's head, "I just didn't want to move," she said. "It was so amazing. Before I knew it I was on my knees."

While visiting the shrine, Nevarez met several people who had known Padre Pio. One priest blessed her with a relic - a scab from the saint's wounds; another priest blessed her with one of the St. Pio's mittens.

Nevarez has been home for more than a year now, but she still feels the saint's presence, and she hasn't been ill since her pilgrimage. "Padre Pio wanted me to know God," she said. "He wanted me to come back to Christ. He wanted me to live the kind of life that God wants me to, not the kind I want."

She has taken a vow of poverty. "It's a very strange thing, but it's good," she said. "I have everything I need."

Still, she feels that she has more to do. "I don't know what's going to happen," she said. "At this point I don't know where I'm going, but I know that it's going to be Christ."

Relics of St. Pio are in the Diocese of Las Vegas through June 26.

"The veneration of relics starts pretty early on in the Christian tradition," said Timothy Johnston, Diocese of Salt Lake City liturgical director.

Early Christians venerated martyrs as models of the faith, Johnston said, and "We continue to venerate saints and/or relics, in a sense, as a reminder of who that person was in the life of the Christian community."

In addition, "There have been miracles attributed to the veneration of relics," he said, and praying to the saints joins an individual with the whole Church to present petitions to the Father through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, he said.