At first glance, San Giovanni Rotondo in Puglia, shrine to Padre Pio, can seem more like honky-tonk Klondyke than holy place. The "humble friar from Pietrelcina", who was yesterday declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in a special Vatican canonisation ceremony, is also the figure at the centre of a business worth €50 million annually, almost entirely based in San Giovanni Rotondo.
When Padre Pio first arrived in San Giovanni Rotondo in 1916, he came to a tiny, dirt poor southern Italian village, clinging to the side of an inhospitable, arid hillside dominated by a Capuchin monastery with just two friars. In those days, San Giovanni was literally the end of the hillside road.
For upwards of eight million pilgrims annually, that obscure hillside village is now journey's end as nearly 1,000 buses stream daily into San Giovanni, now a town of 26,500 inhabitants. For those who want to stay overnight, there are now 98 hotels to cater for them (another 34 are under construction), while 110 restaurants and 132 bars ensure the pilgrims will neither go hungry nor thirsty.
Today's San Giovanni is dominated by the 1950s-built "new" Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and by the huge House of Relief From Suffering Hospital which employs 2,800 people, which can cater for up to 1,300 patients. Under construction too is the new, Renzo Piano designed Church for Padre Pio, scheduled to open next year at a cost of €17 million.
If the presence of a McDonald's restaurant and a recently opened bingo hall hardly seem appropriate for a shrine, neither does the seemingly endless variety of Padre Pio kitsch that can be bought at San Giovanni. That "kitsch" ranges from obvious items such as prayer cards, postcards, rosary beads and mini statues of the friar through to key rings, cigarette lighters, wallets, magnetic pen-holders, teaspoons, beer mugs, pens, pencils, plaques, clocks, calendars, caps etc., all bearing the Padre Pio logo.
On the roadside stalls, too, there are some of the estimated 150 biographies thus far written about Padre Pio (following yesterday's promotion, other books are sure to follow). Padre Pio magazines and the Padre Pio radio and TV station help to spread the good news further.
Even if the proliferation of banks, bancomats, building sites and hawkers might tempt the newly arrived to think some negative thoughts along the money-lenders-in-the-temple line, one needs to spend only a little time in San Giovanni to realise that, for many visitors and pilgrims, it is a special place where the spirit of Padre Pio still seems to offer hope, comfort, solace and encouragement.
In Italy itself, Padre Pio is and always has been a very popular saint. The last few days have seen a veritable Who's Who of Italian public life from actress Sophia Loren through to former "Tangentopoli" investigating magistrate Antonio Di Pietro and ex-Lazio and Italian international footballer Giuseppe Signori express their enthusiasm for the new saint.
Whilst the cynic might sneer at the Padre Pio business phenomenon, no one who has ever visited San Giovanni is likely to underestimate his hold on at least a section of the collective Catholic imagination.