The Vatican has denied that the remains of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina are being exhumed in order to transfer them to a new basilica designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, a move bitterly opposed by many of the saint's devoted followers.

Monsignor Domenico D'Ambrosio, Archbishop of Manfredonia and the Holy See's "delegate" to the Padre Pio shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy - in effect its Vatican supervisor - said the saint's body would be exhumed from his tomb in the crypt of the church at San Giovanni Rotondo in March or April and "exposed to the faithful"

behind glass "for several months".

He said the veneration of Padre Pio's remains was intended to mark the fortieth anniversary of his death in 1968 and the ninetieth anniversary of the moment in 1918 when Padre Pio first experienced the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Christ.

Monsignor D'Ambrosio said he did not know if the saint's body had been miraculously preserved. Church officials said it had not been embalmed, but it had been "injected with formalin" while it was displayed to the faithful for veneration before burial.

Padre Pio, a mystic and hermit, is Italy's most revered modern day saint. He was beatified in 1999 and canonised in 2002 after a lengthy Vatican investigation which rejected long standing allegations that he was a fraud and had faked his stigmata by using acid, a claim revived in a recent Italian biography.

The shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo is visited by seven million people a year. In 2004 a spacious new basilica designed by Renzo Piano was inaugurated nearby. The Franciscan friars who run the sanctuary say the spacious and airy new building is more suited to the huge numbers of devotees who at present crowd into the crypt of the older church, and want to transfer the saint's body to it.

Father Antonio Belpiede, spokesman for the Franciscans at San Giovanni Rotondo, insisted this was "not on the agenda at the present time".

However a hardline group of followers of Padre Pio which opposes the transfer said it remained "on the alert".