A Queens restaurateur who survived a deadly aircraft crash is erecting an enormous shrine to the saint he stated saved him from a watery dying.
Giuseppe “Joe” Oppedisano had been dreaming of erecting the Padre Pio Shrine because the Italian saint appeared to him whereas in a morphine-induced delirium within the wake of the 2020 tragedy that left his complete physique damaged and certainly one of his greatest mates useless.
“I’m nonetheless alive and kicking. With a purpose to get, you bought to offer. And that’s what I did,” Oppedisano, 67, instructed The Put up.
The large shrine sits across the nook from Oppedisano’s Little Neck restaurant, Il Bacco — which was the scene of the notorious Covid conga line in 2020 through the pandemic.
The Catholic sanctuary contains smaller statues of well-known saints just like the Mom Mary and Saint Anthony, however facilities round a 500-pound bronze effigy of Padre Pio, whom Oppedisano credit along with his life.
Oppedisano was piloting his single-engine Cessna on Oct. 4, 2020 with longtime mates Jose Urena and his girlfriend, Maggie O’Neill, on board after a lunch in Nantucket and was making ready to land within the East River when a ship immediately blocked his path.
The aircraft skipped throughout the water and smashed right into a concrete pier earlier than splitting into items.
Witnesses jumped to tug Oppedisano and Urena, who had been within the cockpit, from the wreckage. Each had been rushed to the hospital in crucial situation.
“I used to be a multitude. And I had damaged legs, damaged knee, damaged again, damaged ribs, damaged tongue. I used to be on strictly morphine. I’m simply hallucinating, I’m in la-la land,” Oppedisano stated.
In his daze, Oppedisano referred to as his spouse and daughter at 3 a.m., who recalled their beloved one rambling for a number of minutes and repeatedly asking whether or not his different passengers had survived.
Urena was injured however alive — however 61-year-old O’Neill had been killed.
Tina Marie couldn’t break the information to her father, as a substitute saying, “You actually simply have to fret about you proper now. Simply concentrate on getting wholesome and getting sturdy.”
“It was nearly like his entire aura shifted. His entire vitality shifted, the tone of his voice, and he was like, ‘Tina Maria, I’m going to be simply high quality,’” she stated. “He goes, ‘Padre Pio is right here with me proper now … he instructed me that I’m going to be okay.’ And I bear in mind I simply misplaced it.”
With tears in his eyes, Oppedisano recalled seeing the saint standing in his hospital room with him. The determine was neither touching nor talking with him, however the restaurateur felt an awesome sense of calm and a “chill.”
“I’m not a holy particular person. I’m a sinner like everyone else, nevertheless it was one thing that I really feel goes proper by way of my physique,” he stated.
Oppedisano has gone beneath the knife 28 instances because the crash, together with for a leg-lengthening surgical procedure after the influence of the accident resulted in a 1.5-inch distinction between his legs.
“I’m all even now!” he promised.
The restaurateur feels as if he owes his life to the useless non secular determine, and has made annual pilgrimages to see his physique at its resting place in southern Italy.
It was throughout a 2023 journey that Oppedisano purchased the 6-foot-tall statue.
Tina Marie spearheaded the Padre Pio Shrine of Little Neck non-profit, which crowdsourced greater than $400,000 from the neighborhood to construct the shrine on quite a bit that the household initially deliberate to make use of for restaurant parking.
Lacking from the shrine, nevertheless, is a memorial to or point out of O’Neill.
“She had two sons … They’re upset with me, prefer it was my fault that she died,” Oppedisano stated, including that he hasn’t spoken to the pair because the accident.
A Nationwide Transportation Security Board investigation listed poor pilot judgment as the reason for the tragedy.
The O’Neill household declined to remark when reached by The Put up.
Though the shrine is Catholic in nature, Oppedisano says the spot shall be open to all religions and neighbors as a day by day accessible reflective neighborhood house.
It is going to formally be unveiled at a blockbuster blessing ceremony this weekend, which the Oppedisanos anticipate to attract some 5,000 neighbors.
