Padre Pio: fifty years with the wounds

Today, 23 September, the Church keeps Saint Pius of Pietrelcina — Padre Pio. He died on this day in 1968, at half past two in the morning, with two words in his mouth: “Gesù, Maria.” He was eighty-one, and fifty of those years had been lived with open wounds in his hands, his feet and his side.

Francesco, of Pietrelcina

He was born Francesco Forgione on 25 May 1887 at Pietrelcina in southern Italy, into a peasant household. His father, Grazio, emigrated twice to America and worked years away from his family to pay for the schooling of a son who wanted to be a friar.

He entered the Capuchins at fifteen and took the name Pio. He was ordained on 10 August 1910. His health was wretched — fevers nobody could explain, whole months sent home again. In 1916 he was assigned to the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo on the Gargano, and there he stayed until he died.

The priest

He was ordained on 10 August 1910 in the cathedral of Benevento, by Archbishop Paolo Schinosi. He was twenty-three — and his health would not let him live in community. He spent the next six years at his parents’ house, saying Mass almost alone in the village church. His priesthood began that way: with no congregation.

When the Church wrote up his life for the canonisation, it did not put the stigmata at the centre. It put this: “the pinnacle of his apostolic activity was the celebration of Holy Mass.” The faithful who took part in it, the same text says, witnessed the summit of his spirituality.

Paul VI, speaking to the Capuchin superiors in 1971, three years after his death, was blunter still:

“Look what fame he had, what a worldwide following gathered around him! But why? Perhaps because he was a philosopher? Because he was wise? Because he had resources at his disposal? Because he said Mass humbly, heard confessions from dawn to dusk and was — it is not easy to say it — one who bore the wounds of our Lord. He was a man of prayer and suffering.”— Pope Paul VI, 20 February 1971

Notice what the Pope did not say. He did not begin with the wonders. He mentioned the wounds almost reluctantly — it is not easy to say it — and put first the Mass said humbly and the confessions heard from dawn to dusk.

And here is the first thing I would say to you. What you can imitate in him is exactly what the Pope put first. The stigmata are not asked of you; they will not be given. Sunday Mass is. So is the confession you have been putting off.

From the man himself, in the middle of all that admiration, came the most disarming sentence such a man could say: “I only want to be a poor friar who prays.”

20 September 1918

That morning he was alone in the choir of the old church, praying before the crucifix after Mass. He wrote afterwards to his spiritual director that he saw a mysterious figure, and that when it withdrew, “I became aware that my hands, feet and side were pierced and dripping with blood”.

He was thirty-one. He was the first priest in the history of the Church known to bear the visible stigmata.

• Fifty years. The wounds stayed open from 1918 until days before his death in 1968 — and then closed without leaving a scar.
• Examined by doctors. The Holy Office sent specialists: Luigi Romanelli, Giorgio Festa, Amico Bignami. They disagreed with one another about the cause, but agreed on the facts — the wounds did not become infected, did not heal, and bled every day.
• He hated speaking of it. He wore brown fingerless mittens to hide his hands and asked people not to ask. He called the wounds “my humiliation”.

Thirty-four, and two still to go

One night at nine o’clock Padre Carmelo found him still with the beads in his hand and asked whether he was not going to rest. Padre Pio explained himself:

“I still have two rosaries to pray today. I have only said thirty-four so far. Then I will go to bed.”— Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, to Padre Carmelo

Only. The whole man is in that word. Thirty-four rosaries on a working day — and in his vocabulary that was not much.

He was asked once how he managed so many. He did not answer with a method. He answered with a question of his own: “Some days I say forty, some days fifty. How do you manage to say none?”

He called the Rosary the weapon, and said of the one who fights it: “Satan wants to destroy this prayer, but he will never succeed. It is the prayer of her who triumphs over everything and everyone.” Two days before he died he left the same message: “Love Our Lady and make her loved. Say the Rosary, and say it always.”

Now the uncomfortable part. Do not attempt the thirty-four. You are not him, and the comparison serves only to discourage you — which is precisely what the enemy wants. But his question still stands, and it is addressed to you: how do you manage to say none? One rosary. Today. Whole, and slowly, even if it is the only one this year. That is how a man begins who ends at thirty-four.

The confessional and the hospital

The work of his life was not the marvels: it was the confessional. He spent ten, twelve, up to sixteen hours a day in it. People waited days for a turn; there were lists. Many stories are told of penitents to whom he named the sin they were hiding — but what the testimonies repeat most is something else: they came out light.

And there was the other side, very concrete. On 5 May 1956 he opened, on top of that poor mountain, a hospital built with donations from around the world. He refused to call it a hospital. He called it Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza — the Home for the Relief of Suffering. Today it is one of the largest hospitals in southern Italy.

He also founded the prayer groups, which he called “nurseries of faith, hearths of love”. They still exist, in their thousands.

The mystic

The canonisation text says it with Roman sobriety: “he was always immersed in supernatural realities.” He passed the day and a large part of the night in conversation with God.

Of what is told about him, much is verifiable and much is popular devotion; and the Church never made the wonders the reason for canonising him. What the testimonies repeat most insistently is the confessional: penitents to whom he named the sin they had come hiding, people who went in to test him and came out weeping. There are also the accounts of bilocation — he in one place, seen in another — and the scent many said they caught with no explanation.

He would not speak of any of it. He hid his hands in brown mittens, called the wounds my humiliation, and summed up the spiritual life in a sentence with nothing extraordinary about it:

“In books we seek God; in prayer we find him. Prayer is the key which opens God’s heart.”— Saint Pius of Pietrelcina

Here is the test, and it holds for the whole spiritual life: the gifts are not for the one who receives them. They are for other people. A mystic who has become interesting to himself is already lost. The proof that his were from God was not the wounds — it was obeying in silence when the Church herself forbade him to use them.

The combat, and Saint Michael

The official biography says it without elaborating: “for many years, he experienced spiritual sufferings.” In the letters to his spiritual directors, Padre Benedetto and Padre Agostino, he described those years without embarrassment and without drama — nights when he was attacked, and mornings when he got up to say Mass as though nothing had happened.

He did not treat the devil as a metaphor. Neither did he treat him as an interesting subject: he gave people a prayer and sent them up the mountain. In 1917 he made a pilgrimage to the grotto of Monte Sant’Angelo on the Gargano, the oldest shrine in the West dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel, and for years he sent his penitents there. He told them:

“You will need the help of Saint Michael, living in this world.”— Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, to his spiritual children

Notice the sobriety. The man who saw it at close range fed no curiosity whatever about the enemy — he set people praying to Saint Michael and went back to the confessional. Anyone who today speaks much of the devil and little of God is not imitating him: he is doing the opposite of what he did.

The two miracles the Church weighed

Cures are attributed to him by the thousand. The Church examined two, and took years over each.

For the beatification: the healing of Consiglia De Martino of Salerno. Canonical process from July 1996 to June 1997, medical board in April 1998, decree in December 1998. Beatified on 2 May 1999.

For the canonisation: the cure of Matteo Pio Colella, a boy of San Giovanni Rotondo who came out of a coma. Process from June to October 2000, medical testimony in November 2001, decree in December. Canonised on 16 June 2002.

The end

He said his last Mass on 22 September 1968, seated, without the strength to stand. He died before dawn on the 23rd. When the body was prepared, the wounds had gone: the skin was smooth, as though nothing had ever been there.

He was canonised by John Paul II on 16 June 2002 — the same man who, as a young Polish priest, had made his confession to him in 1947.

The prayers

The Collect of his Mass asks for one exact thing: not the marvels, but union with the sufferings of Christ.

And this is the prayer to the Guardian Angel, which he had prayed since childhood. Padre Pio would send his angel to people who wrote to him from far away, and asked them to send him theirs — he said it with the plainness of a man sending a message:

Sancte Pie a Pietrelcina, ora pro nobis. Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, pray for us — and win us the grace to obey when obeying is hard.