True Devotion to Padre Pio

This blurb appears in the New York Times today:

Plans to exhume the body of Padre Pio, left, Italy’s favorite saint, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death have been met with fierce opposition from followers . . . . Over the weekend, Archbishop Domenico Umberto D’Ambrosio announced his intention to lift the saint from his crypt in southern San Giovanni Rotondo and put the body on display for several months for pilgrims to venerate, starting in April. But other Roman Catholics, among them Francesco Traversi, who heads an association of Padre Pio devotees, are threatening to block the exhumation in court.

So far, not much new. Once again, some people want to exhume a saint, others want to let him rest in peace. No big deal. Then we get this bit of news:

The popularity of Padre Pio, who was also credited with thousands of miraculous cures during his life, is hard to overestimate. A Catholic magazine found that more Italian Catholics pray to him than any other icon of the faith, including the Virgin Mary or Jesus.

I’d heard about the ubiquitous life-size statues , but not this. Either the entire nation of Italy is in desperate need of catechesis (entirely likely) or someone forgot that every mass offered is directed to God through Christ (also entirely likely). It also seems that statistics like this would be a bit hard to compile without direct divine revelation, and the odds of that happening are probably not too good. Nonetheless, it’s a point that I find troubling, even if exaggerated, for devotion to Christ should always surpass devotion to his servants, even if those servants had the odor of sanctity streaming from their stigmata while they bilocated.