Read Libby Purves: Padre Pio's corpse, sacred or sick?

To the small town of San Giovanni Rotondo, in southern Italy, they came in their thousands – devotees of St Pio of Pietrelcina, better known as Padre Pio, whose remains went on display to the public for the first time since his death 40 years ago.

After a Mass led by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, pilgrims of all ages filed past the crystal casket yesterday in an event that was part religious devotion and part media sensation.

Almost one million faithful have made reservations to view the body over the next few months; many more who have not made reservations are expected to queue for hours. They were joined by a scrum of journalists – including a team from al-Jazeera, the Arabic station – waiting to enter the crypt of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

“He knows what I want from him,” said Antonio Zimbaldi, 19, who was badly burnt in a fire two years ago and attended Mass with his face, except for his lips, covered with white gauze. “I have been devoted to him for as long as I can remember.”

Assunta Antico, 80, who was covered with a shawl in the same deep brown that Padre Pio wore, said: “I had a stroke two years ago. I’m paralysed and I want to walk again.”

There may not be much of the original saint to see: the Capuchin Friars, of whom Padre Pio was a member and who are custodians of the body, said it was “surprisingly well preserved” after its recent exhumation. But it was almost entirely covered with a friar’s habit and the face, apparently too decomposed to show, was covered with a silicone mask.

Padre Pio, who was born in 1887 and died in 1968, is Catholicism’s most widely and fervently worshipped saint. During his lifetime he was believed to have borne the stigmata – the wounds of the crucified Jesus – on his body, to have performed many miracles of healing, to have had the capacity of being in two places at the same time and to have emitted a strong aroma of wild flowers. He was made a saint by John Paul II in 2001.

But the Catholic hierarchy has not always warmed to him and he was accused of fraud throughout his life. In the 1960s John XXIII called him “a cloth idol” and he was at one point investigated by the Holy Office of the Vatican, which suspected him of “abuse of popular gullibility”. For a time Padre Pio was even forbidden to say Mass in public.

A senior Jesuit academic, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Times: “This is a very tactile form of spirituality. It is not pagan, but it is not very important to my faith.”

Nevertheless, any objections in Rome were swept aside by the force of his veneration by millions of believers. A survey in 2006 by the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana found that more Italians prayed to Padre Pio than to Jesus or the Virgin Mary.