It was only recently that I discovered the Servant of God Don Dolindo Ruotolo, a Neapolitan priest and a Franciscan tertiary, through his beautiful prayer of surrender to the Divine Will. He was a near contemporary of Padre Pio, who said on meeting Don Dolindo that he “could see paradise in his soul”.
Don Dolindo’s story contains some of the same exceptional signs of sanctity and some of the same no-nonsense spirituality as Padre Pio’s, especially his death in the odour of sanctity in 1970, aged 88, after 65 years as a priest. He was a scholar and mystic, as well as a great pastor, renowned exorcist and spiritual director, who was famed for miraculous cures and healing from spiritual afflictions. In 1940 he published a criticism of some tendencies he discerned in the historical-critical method of biblical scholarship. He also produced his own monumental work of biblical commentary with the aim of making the Scriptures more accessible.
