LITTLE NECK — Padre Pio is Joe Oppedisano’s favorite saint, and now he is inviting the public to share in his love for the Italian stigmata and mystic.
Oppedisano has erected a park on a plot of land he owns and placed a life-size statue of Padre Pio, which he had shipped over from Italy. The space is intended to provide the public with a place to find spiritual renewal.
“It’s for everybody to come and reflect and pray and hope and don’t worry, like Padre Pio said,” Oppedisano explained. “That was his famous words in life, ‘You’ve got to believe.’ And I believe tremendously.”
The park officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 26, during which Bishop Emeritus Nicholas DiMarzio blessed the Padre Pio statue, along with other statues of saints that stand inside the peaceful space at 45-32 Little Neck Parkway.
When the gate swung open, hundreds of people strolled into the park to gaze at the statues, sit on the benches, and pray.
Maria Bertolino came to pray with her 25-year-old son Salvatore.
“Padre Pio is very special to us,” she said. “People just need to pray.”
The park, which is open seven days a week from sunrise to sunset and is located around the corner from Il Bacco, the restaurant on Northern Boulevard that Oppedisano owns, is a dream come true for the Italian-born restaurateur.
In 2020, Oppedisano survived a plane crash, and he believes Padre Pio’s intercession saved his life. He said he asked for Padre Pio’s intercession throughout his recovery.
“I truly believe Padre Pio helped me. I’m alive, and I’m here today,” he said.
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Grateful to be alive, Oppedisano vowed to build a tribute to his favorite saint. The result of his labors was the park that opened on April 26.
Padre Pio (1887-1968) was an Italian friar of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin who bore the stigmata — the wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross, on his hands and feet — and was known as a mystic. He was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 2002.
The statue in the park was one that Oppedisano found in Italy and arranged to have brought to the United States. Oppedisano, who has made several pilgrimages to Padre Pio’s tomb in Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy, said he saw the statue during one of his journeys and decided to buy it and have it shipped home.
The copper statue depicts the saint with his arms raised, as if greeting a visitor, and shows the stigmata on his hands. Oppedisano stored the statue in the basement of Il Bacco until the park was ready to open.
“My dad has always been very ambitious,” said his daughter, Tina Maria Oppedisano. “He had this vision. He had this idea. And I’m so proud of him.”
Father Joseph Fonti, pastor of the Church of St. Mel in Flushing, is the chaplain of the new space. He praised Oppedisano’s willingness to put his faith into action.
“To create a place for people to come to commune with God is a great, great awareness to God’s goodness to him and God’s nearness to us,” he said.