Who was Father Mario, the priest with “miraculous hands” who treated 3,000 patients in one day?

Argentina was different when a young Jose Mario Pantaleo He came from Italy, convinced that it was there that he would accomplish his priestly mission. Born in the small Italian town of Pistoia in 1915, the Father Mario It will not take long to make himself known throughout the country thanks to his tireless work of solidarity and, in particular, to his “healing handswith whom, according to his followers, does wonders.

Once his fame as a healing priest spread throughout the region, the lines of devotees who came to Father Mario in search of his miracles began to grow ever larger. From what they say, came to treat more than 3,000 patients in one day. But his best-known case is that of Pearl Gallardoa woman who had suffered from uterine cancer and claimed to have been cured thanks to his intervention, which is why she would end up being his closest collaborator until the death of the Italian based in Argentina.

This led to the start of the Process for Beatification of Father Mariofirst step for your sanctification. “So far we have seen that there are no obstacles to start the process, this is what the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires has investigated and that he is arriving in Rome so that the Holy See responds that there is none. They have already answered that the Father has ‘reputation for holiness‘, that’s what people do who have been asking for years to be blessed. From the moment the process begins, it will be considered ‘servant of God‘ and the first stamps with his image can now be printed,” explained the doctor of canon law and father daniel medinaone of the postulators.

Thus, the Argentine writer, journalist and sociologist Silvina Premat immersed himself fully in the life of the healing priest to tell it in detail in Father Mario, his new biography published by Ediciones B, in which he explains how this “instrument of God” has become synonymous with miracles in Argentina. As Father Mario said to those who came to him: “I am the guitar, the guitarist is on top and he is the one who really does everything”.

He could have been a great philosopher. maybe. He could have stood out with his speeches. Maybe. He could also have been a great architect or a naturopathic doctor. But no. He put all his intelligence, his will, his abilities and his inclinations at the service of what he recognized as a child as the path to his personal fulfillment.

No obstacle succeeded in stopping him, be it illness, wars or loneliness. By following this path, he discovers himself as instrument of good for some and scandal stone for the others. He didn’t understand it, but that’s not why he left it aside, on the contrary.

Check out this biography of Jose Mario Pantaleo may be new to so many who knew him, but did not know his mixed feelingsof his experiences in Italy before settling in Argentina or of the misunderstanding of which he was the object.

For those who will learn to know him from these pages, as happened to me when I wrote them, they will be able to discover motivations and tools to live fully what everyone perceives as the meaning of their own existence.

Prompted by friends of Pantaleo, who felt there were gaps in the existing biographies that needed to be filled, I set out to find the missing information. I have done so by appealing to the memory of those who shared the most diverse circumstances with him, by consulting Italian and Argentine archives which preserve documents and letters written by or about him, and by examining documentaries , videos or audios.

Thus, I came across experiences that added color, tension and drama to those already known in his life. Before every step that Mario Pantaleo tried to take in the direction he had proposed, he had to overcome difficulties that seemed to boycott him. He Awaken your extraordinary abilities in the middle of his life, he did nothing more than enrich an already precious history.

The chapters presented here follow the chronological evolution of Father Mario, from his birth to his death; a trajectory full of episodes that shed light on its strengths and weaknesses. They are accounts of real facts, gestures or words which can give rise to presumptions or interpretations, but not to fictions, except involuntary error.

As an appendix to the historical trajectory, we propose here an approximation of another of the unknown aspects of Father Mario, his passionate about philosophy and the indications of a thought of its own. He also offers a visit to his childhood home, in Italy, a hundred years after his birth.

I hope, and hope, that anyone who wants to read this book will do so in the order inspired by their intuition. That is to say, he enters the life of the biography as when he meets someone in a certain situation, age and time; only later will the past be revealed and it will be possible to accompany him the rest of the way.

Without pretending to exhaust each of the circumstances that he had to live, I tried to weave a text with the threads provided by certain physical, psychological and spiritual experiences of a man who he only unveiled his soul in front of his superiors and sometimes in front of his friends. I tried to stop at moments that could represent milestones in what he himself would call his evolutionary dynamic because, said Pantaleo, “everything evolves in this world and man evolves too; intellectually it evolves, emotionally it evolves, spiritually it evolves and it also evolves with the desire to work and to do something”.

Born in Pistoia, Italy, in 1915.

He was a priest, graduated in psychology and philosophy.

In 2021 the cause for his beatification and future canonization was opened, since then he has been known by the title of Servant of God.

She is a journalist and sociologist.

She worked for sixteen years at the newspaper La Nación as an editor in the Culture and Society sections, and has also worked in other national and international media.

She is the author of books such as Village priests. From Mugica to Father Pepe, Pepe, the village priest there Argentinian Miracles.

Continue reading: