medical hypothesis was proposed in 1987 to explain the wounds, it claimed that St. Francis may have contracted leprosy. Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina For over fifty years, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina reported stigmata which were studied by several 20th-century physicians, whose independence from the Church is not known. The observations were reportedly inexplicable and the wounds never became infected. His wounds healed once, but reappeared. The wounds were examined by Luigi Romanelli, chief physician of the City Hospital of Barletta, for about one year. The physician Angelo Maria Merla noted that the wounds were not tubercular in origin but could not make an official diagnosis without further tests. The surgeon Giorgio Festa, a private practitioner, also examined them in 1920 and 1925. Professor Giuseppe Bastianelli, physician to Pope Benedict XV, examined the wounds, but no report of his examinations was made. Pathologist Amico Bignami of the University of Rome also observed the wounds, describing them as shallow. Festa, who had originally agreed with Bignami, later described the wounds as superficial when covered with a scab. Giorgio Festa noted that "at the edges of the lesions, the skin is perfectly normal and does not show any sign of edema, of penetration, or of redness, even when examined with a good magnifying glass". Alberto Caserta took X-rays of the hands in 1954 and found no abnormality in the bone structure. Giuseppe Sala who worked as a physician for Pio between 1956 and 1968 commented that tests revealed his blood had no signs of abnormality. There were both religious and non-religious critics who accused Padre Pio of faking his stigmata, saying he used carbolic acid to make the wounds. The historian Sergio Luzzatto recounted that in 1919, according to one document in the Vatican's archive, Pio had requested carbolic acid from a pharmacist. She said it was for sterilizing syringes used for vaccination. Amico Bignami in a report wrote that the wounds were caused by "neurotic necrosis". He suggested they had been inflicted unconsciously by suggestion and artificially maintained by iodine that Pio had used as a disinfectant. In 1922, physician Agostino Gemelli wrote that Pio was an hysteric and his stigmata were self-induced, not of supernatural origin. Gemelli also speculated that his wounds were kept open with carbolic acid. Giorgio Festa, who examined the stigmata of the friar on October 28, 1919, wrote in his report that they "are not the