letter dated 21 August 1918: Bilocation Pio was believed by his followers to have the gift of bilocation, the ability to be in two places at the same time. There were many accounts of people claiming to have seen Pio all over the world throughout his life, whereas it is well documented that he never left San Giovanni Rotondo from 1918 until his death. Pio himself reported to have experienced a bilocation in 1905, when he was a young Capuchin student. In a letter sent to his spiritual director, he explained that he was in the choir with another friar when he suddenly found himself far away in a house, where he witnessed a father dying while his wife was delivering a baby girl, then he found himself back in the choir. When bishop Raffaele Rossi asked him about bilocation as part of a Vatican inquiry, Pio replied: "I don't know how it is or the nature of this phenomenon—and I certainly don't give it much thought—but it did happen to me to be in the presence of this or that person, to be in this or that place; I do not know whether my mind was transported there, or what I saw was some sort of representation of the place or the person; I do not know whether I was there with my body or without it." Healing In the 1999 book Padre Pio: The Wonder Worker, a segment by Irish priest Malachy Gerard Carroll describes the story of Gemma de Giorgi, a Sicilian girl whose blindness was believed to have been cured during a visit to Pio. Gemma, who was brought to San Giovanni Rotondo in 1947 by her grandmother, was born without pupils. During her trip to see Pio, the little girl began to see objects, including a steamboat and the sea. Gemma's grandmother did not believe the child had been healed. After Gemma forgot to ask Pio for grace during her confession, her grandmother implored the priest to ask God to restore her sight. Pio told her, "The child must not weep and neither must you for the child sees and you know she sees." According to the bishop of Volterra, Raffaele Rossi, in charge of investigating Pio: "Of the alleged healings, many are unconfirmed or non-existent. In Padre Pio's correspondence, however, there are some credible declarations that attribute miracles to his intercession. But without medical