According to the AP, the film omits the more publicly-known pieces of his life that include several investigations into the saint by skeptical Vatican authorities.
The film’s beginning includes the World War I homecoming of Italian soldiers to San Giovanni Rotondo, the town where Padre Pio’s monastery is located. The setting includes social strife between the Catholic Church and wealthy landowners and an uprising of socialists that includes the working class and peasants, the AP said.
After the socialists win a local mayoral election in 1920, the ruling class, backed by the Church, refuses to respect the results. Political unrest ensues. The socialists attempt to hang their flag on the local government building, but in an attempt to stop them, police shoot into the crowd and kill 14, while injuring 80. Ferrara called it the “Massacre of San Giovanni Rotondo” in the interview.
Ferrara, who had made a documentary about Padre Pio before working on the movie, felt that the…
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