One of my sweet and wonderful friends, who has a remarkable devotion to Padre Pio, asked if I could make her a small icon of Padre Pio for her prayer space. Shortly thereafter I mentioned to a dear elderly friend what I was painting, and he said I have something you might like to see. Out of a very old envelope he pulled a yellowed handkerchief with what looked to be blood stains. He said his uncle was an altar boy and served mass with Padre Pio, and after mass ended one day, Padre Pio had wiped his hands onto the cloth. My friend Francis held on to that cloth, and now was allowing me to take the cloth home while I worked on Padre Pio. When the icon was completed, I laid the blood stained cloth onto the icon, which made the icon a 3rd class relic.
Sometime after my friend had received her icon, she sent me a picture of a rose which she had cut from her yard displayed in a vase next to the icon. She asked me if I had intended to paint Padre Pio’s stigmata like roses? Then as I looked at the picture she had sent me, looking at the roses next to the icon, I realized the stigmata I had painted did look like the roses.
