Contemplating the astounding power of Padre Pio’s ministry, gifts, and trials

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968) was famous during his lifetime. He wasn’t a brilliant theologian, an innovative religious founder, a martyr, a bishop, a cardinal, or a pope. He was a Capuchin Franciscan friar who spent most of his adult life in a southern Italian town. But miraculous phenomena surrounded him from the moment he entered religious life.

Fr. John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary defines a miracle as a “sensibly perceptible effect, surpassing at least the powers of visible nature, produced by God to witness to some truth or to testify to someone’s sanctity.”

Why did God apparently choose to witness to the holiness of this Italian priest through perceptible signs and wonders?

The childhood of Francesco Forgione (1887-1968) seemed ordinary enough. He, his older brother, and his three younger sisters were raised on a peasant farm in the village of Pietrelcina, Italy. His parents were poor but devout. Francesco was a pious, obedient, and virtuous son, and when his parents realized that he had a vocation, his father traveled to America to find work. With the money his father earned, Francesco was able to be taught by tutors in Italy so that he could pursue the priesthood.

At the age of fifteen, he entered the Capuchin novitiate and was given the name Friar Pio. For the next seven years, he studied to become a priest. But as soon as he entered the order, strange things began happening. These things—perhaps best described as extraordinary spiritual gifts—lasted for the rest of his life.

The beginning of his spiritual gifts

Friar Pio’s health deteriorated markedly in the Capuchin novitiate. His superiors were concerned about his headaches, insomnia, fainting spells, and other medical problems, so they sent him home to recover. Pio’s health improved as soon as he returned to his hometown. When they recalled him to his friary, he became seriously ill, and the pattern repeated itself, again and again.

During World War I, Pio was drafted into military service in the medical corps, but the authorities eventually discharged him due to his continued poor health. One might conjecture that something or someone was trying very hard to deter Pio from entering religious life.

Even while he was recovering at home under the watchful eyes of his worried mother, Friar Pio practiced physical mortifications, such as taking the discipline, sleeping on the ground, fasting, and spending hours in prayer. He wrote to his spiritual advisors, telling them he was experiencing periods of darkness as well as spiritual ecstasies. Although his personal virtue and acts of penance seemed extraordinary to others, Pio humbly worried that his sins displeased God and would prevent him from entering Heaven.

On August 5, 1918, Padre Pio received the stigmata during an encounter with our Lord in prayer. Although he initially tried to hide the wounds on his hands, feet, and side, his brother friars discovered the truth, and Pio told his superiors, under obedience, what had happened. These wounds caused him constant pain, required daily care, and lasted for almost the rest of his life. (The wounds healed shortly before his death, inexplicably leaving no scars.)

Over the years, medical doctors carefully inspected Pio’s wounds, which never healed and yet never became infected, and they could not explain what caused them.

His priestly ministry

The news of a priest with the stigmata at the church in San Giovanni Rotondo spread through the countryside and attracted crowds. At first, onlookers probably only attended Pio’s Masses because they wanted to see the wounds in his hands. But many people said afterward that they had never experienced a Mass like his. The way he prayed and wept, and seemed to see Jesus Christ, was deeply moving to them. Sometimes Pio’s Masses would last for hours, but people in the pews said they did not notice the passing of time.

People also began to recognize Padre Pio’s gifts as a confessor. While Pio could be gentle and encouraging with his penitents, he could also be severe and refuse absolution to people he believed were not sorry for their sins. On some occasions, Padre Pio would stop a penitent before he even started talking and would list all the sins the person had committed since his last confession. How was this possible? It appears that sometimes—though not all the time—God would reveal a person’s sins to Pio. When God granted such an insight, Padre Pio saw it as part of his ministry as a priest to reconcile sinners to God. Only God knows how many souls were brought back to the practice of the faith by Padre Pio through these supernatural insights.

Another part of his priestly ministry involved the formation of prayer groups. Like many priests, Padre Pio founded a prayer group for devout Catholics in his town and encouraged the group’s members to grow in their prayer life. Padre Pio’s prayer groups spread all over the world.

When Pio arrived in San Giovanni Rotondo, it was a remote village only accessible by dirt roads. As pilgrims began arriving in the town—sometimes deciding to settle down near their beloved priest—the town began growing. Pio had always suffered from poor health, and he realized that the townspeople needed a hospital. Padre Pio and local leaders established a hospital called the House for the Relief of Suffering, and donations flooded in. Since Pio had taken a vow of poverty, the Vatican had to grant him special permission to be involved in decisions involving the hospital’s finances.

Although he had zealously tried to avoid publicity, Padre Pio’s stigmata had made him famous. It would be nice to say that pilgrims to San Giovanni Rotondo were always polite and respectful when they came to the Capuchin church for Confession or Mass. But that would be a lie. Padre Pio was mobbed daily by large crowds of people who loudly begged for his help. Witnesses admitted that it was like a circus.

For example, although the friars tried to protect him, Pio stopped wearing the traditional Capuchin zucchetto because people kept stealing it from his head as a relic. The residents of San Giovanni Rotondo were also strongly attached to their beloved priest, and riots broke out repeatedly when there were rumors that the Capuchins planned to move him.

Padre Pio’s trials

In defense of Pio’s Capuchin superiors and leaders in the Vatican, it was not unreasonable to place restrictions on Padre Pio’s activities as he became famous. He could have been a fraud or mentally ill, and his popularity could have made him proud.

Vatican officials limited his public ministry precisely because of the violence exhibited by the town’s residents when they thought they would lose the priest and because of the rowdy behavior of pilgrims in church. For many years, it was almost as if he were in prison. Yet when a priest showed up late one night with orders that his superiors wanted him to relocate, Pio said yes and was ready to obey that very minute. Impressed with his obedience, his superiors changed their minds.

Some people—for reasons known only to God—made false accusations against Padre Pio. A respected medical doctor who had never even examined Pio’s wounds told everyone that they were self-inflicted. An archbishop—later found to have protected immoral priests in his archdiocese—wrote numerous, vindictive letters to the Vatican claiming that Pio was a fraud. A few of Pio’s brother friars installed a listening device in Pio’s room to record private conversations that he had with women in his prayer group. The friars were convinced that Pio was carrying on affairs.

Eventually, all such claims were proven to be false.

The phenomenon of bilocation

During his lifetime, many people claimed that Padre Pio appeared to them even though he was known to have been in San Giovanni Rotondo at the same time. Some of these accounts of bilocation are better documented than others. But one of the best attested events occurred when Pio was only a young novice.

Pio was praying when, according to his own testimony, he suddenly found himself far away at a wealthy home in northern Italy. The father of the household was dying, while his wife was giving birth to a daughter. The Blessed Mother appeared to Pio and told him she was entrusting the baby to Pio, and that he would be her spiritual guide. Pio protested that he was still only a seminarian, but the Blessed Mother told him not to worry. She predicted Pio would see the girl in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and then become her spiritual advisor.

Seventeen years later, it all came true. Giovanna Rizzani innocently walked into Padre Pio’s confessional, and he shocked her by correctly describing the circumstances of her birth and a previous (supernatural) meeting in Rome. Giovanna became a lifelong disciple of Padre Pio.

There is not enough space to describe all of Padre Pio’s other gifts: his accurate predictions of future events; his ability to see and communicate with his guardian angel; the evidence that he experienced demonic persecution; his mystical visions; the healings that occurred through his prayers, sometimes at the exact moment when he was praying for someone; his ability to communicate with penitents who did not speak Italian; and the aroma of violets or incense which some people smelled, indicating Pio’s presence, often during difficult times.

However, these examples of apparent miracles can help us understand why God granted gifts to Padre Pio in the first place.

A suffering heart full of love

Padre Pio’s biographers frequently mention that he was a kind-hearted man. Although he was willing to raise his voice to people when they needed correction—like any good father—he was extraordinarily sensitive. A man who was a novice with Pio recalled that during their novitiate, there was a daily meditation reading on the Passion of our Lord. Friar Pio was so moved by the retelling of the story of our Lord’s suffering that he often wept. One time, he wept so long and so hard that he left a puddle of tears on the floor. The other novices teased him about this, so afterward he put a handkerchief in front of him to catch the tears when he prayed.

For most of us, the story of Christ’s Passion is very sad, but not sad enough for us to weep. Pio, on the other hand, loved Christ so deeply that he wanted to share Christ’s sufferings. He was willing to experience the excruciating pain of bleeding wounds in his hands, feet, and side every day for the rest of his life, without complaint or losing his trust in God, for the sake of saving souls from Hell.

And he was always praying. He was never too busy thinking about himself to intercede for people who were suffering and to lead them to God.

Perhaps God asked Pio a similar question to the one He asked the Prophet Isaiah (see Isa 6:8). Perhaps God asked Padre Pio, figuratively or literally, “Whom shall I send to comfort this dying man on the other side of the world? Whom shall I send to this nun with incurable cancer to show her the power of God to heal? Whom shall I send to guide this fatherless child into adulthood?” And Pio responded, just like Isaiah, full of trust and love, “Here am I! Send me.”

The miraculous phenomena surrounding Padre Pio convinced many people that he was a saint. But God’s miracles are more than a neon sign indicating someone’s sanctity. The signs and wonders in the life of Padre Pio remind us that God is more powerful than all the trials we might experience in this life, including betrayal, sickness, fear, poverty, temptation, and persecution. Because of the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s power to save is present everywhere, particularly where there are holy souls who love Him.