Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

Life and historical context

Francesco Forgione was born on 25 May 1887 in Pietrelcina, a small village in the southern Italian region of Campania, the fourth of seven children (only five of whom survived infancy) of Grazio Mario Forgione, a peasant farmer who worked seasonally in the United States to support the family, and Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio. The family was profoundly devout; the elder Forgione boys were given names of saints, and the family kept the local Catholic feast days with thoroughgoing piety. Francesco, called by the family Francesco bello (beautiful Francesco), showed precocious religious sensitivity from childhood: he reported visions and locutions from a young age, kept a small altar in his bedroom, and decided, by his own account, on the religious life by the age of ten.¹

He entered the novitiate of the Capuchin Friars Minor at Morcone on 6 January 1903, at the age of fifteen, taking the religious name Brother Pio of Pietrelcina (after Pope Saint Pius V, the Dominican pope of the Counter-Reformation). His Capuchin formation was interrupted repeatedly by serious illness; he suffered from a chronic respiratory condition (probably tuberculosis) that gave him the appearance of severe ill health throughout his life. He completed his theological studies at the Capuchin friary of Pietrelcina (where his bishop allowed him to remain near family for medical reasons) and was ordained a priest on 10 August 1910, at the age of twenty-three.

The Italian government drafted him into military service during the First World War. He was assigned to the medical corps in Naples and discharged for medical reasons in 1918. After his discharge he was permanently assigned to the Capuchin friary of San Giovanni Rotondo in the southern Italian region of Apulia, where he would remain for the rest of his life, fifty years. The friary was on a remote hillside in the Gargano peninsula, accessible only by a long mountain road from the railway station at Foggia.

The decisive event of his life occurred on 20 September 1918. While praying alone in the choir loft of the friary church before a crucifix, Padre Pio received what the Catholic mystical tradition recognizes as the visible stigmata, the wounds of Christ's Passion impressed on his hands, feet, and side. He was the first known case in Catholic history of a priest bearing the visible stigmata in this way (Saint Francis of Assisi, the previous most famous case, was a deacon and not a priest). The wounds remained visible on Padre Pio's body for fifty years, until shortly before his death, when they faded inexplicably and disappeared. Multiple medical examinations were conducted by Vatican-appointed and independent physicians during this period. The wounds bled regularly, did not show the suppuration characteristic of ordinary wounds, did not heal under medical treatment, and did not produce the bodily decline that fifty years of continuous bleeding wounds would normally cause.²

Padre Pio's life at San Giovanni Rotondo was lived primarily in the confessional. He heard confessions for ten to fifteen hours per day during much of his priestly life, hearing the confessions of an estimated five million penitents over fifty years, drawn from across Italy and increasingly from across the Catholic world. His confessions were frequently described as remarkable: he was reported repeatedly to have known things about penitents' lives that they had not told him, to have refused absolution to those who were withholding serious sin, and to have given direction in confession that proved subsequently to be supernaturally informed.

The Catholic Church investigated him repeatedly during his lifetime. He was placed under various restrictions on his public ministry by the Holy Office (predecessor of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) at different periods, particularly between 1923 and 1933, when he was forbidden to celebrate Mass publicly or hear confessions. The restrictions were lifted, and the formal Vatican investigations of the stigmata, conducted by physicians and theologians, eventually treated the phenomenon as authentic. Pope Saint Paul VI in 1971 publicly defended Padre Pio's authenticity in remarks to the Capuchin Order.

He died at San Giovanni Rotondo on 23 September 1968 at the age of eighty-one, after a short final illness. His funeral drew over one hundred thousand mourners. His body was found incorrupt at the first exhumation in 2008, and his relics are preserved in the lower crypt of the new Sanctuary of Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo.

Theological and spiritual significance

The significance of Saint Padre Pio in Catholic spirituality is principally his witness to the reality of the supernatural in the modern era. The Catholic Church does not require its members to believe any particular private revelation, mystical phenomenon, or miracle attributed to a particular saint, but the consistent Catholic conviction is that the Lord Jesus continues to work in the lives of the saints in ways that affirm the doctrines of the faith and that authenticate the apostolic tradition. Padre Pio's stigmata, his confessional ministry, and the multiple healings attributed to his intercession during and after his life are, in this Catholic understanding, signs of the continuing reality of the mystical Body of Christ and of the Communion of Saints.³

His own spiritual teaching, recorded principally in his correspondence with his spiritual directors and in his recorded conversations with penitents, emphasizes three principal Catholic disciplines: the daily examination of conscience, frequent confession, and the praying of the Holy Rosary. He is reported to have prayed approximately thirty rosaries per day in his last years, calling the rosary the weapon for these times. He encouraged the use of the spiritual bouquet (a numbered count of prayers offered for a particular intention) and was personally devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin Mary under several titles, particularly Our Lady of Grace.

The hospital he founded at San Giovanni Rotondo, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (Home for the Relief of Suffering), opened in 1956 with the support of the Catholic faithful's donations from across the world, was one of the first modern Catholic hospitals in Italy. It remains one of the principal Catholic medical institutions in southern Italy and continues the saint's mission of caring for the sick.

He was beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II on 2 May 1999 and canonized by the same pope on 16 June 2002. The canonization was attended by over three hundred thousand pilgrims at Saint Peter's Square, the largest canonization gathering of the John Paul II pontificate.⁴

Devotion and liturgical observance

The feast of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina is celebrated on 23 September in the universal Roman Calendar with the rank of memorial. In Italy, where Padre Pio is the most venerated modern saint, the feast is observed with extensive civic and ecclesiastical solemnity. The Capuchin Order observes the feast as a major celebration of the Order's calendar.

The principal pilgrimage destination associated with Saint Padre Pio is the Sanctuary of Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, drawing an estimated seven million pilgrims annually (the second-largest Catholic pilgrimage site in Italy after the Vatican itself). The complex includes the original sixteenth-century Capuchin friary church, the modern Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church (designed by Renzo Piano, opened in 2004), and the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza hospital. His birthplace at Pietrelcina is a secondary major pilgrimage site.

The traditional iconography of Saint Padre Pio shows him in the brown Capuchin habit (with the distinctive Capuchin pointed hood) wearing the half-fingered woolen gloves that he used to cover the wounds on his hands. He is frequently depicted at the altar celebrating Mass, in the confessional, or holding a rosary. His liturgical color on the feast is white.

Prayers and novenas associated with Saint Padre Pio

The principal devotion to Saint Padre Pio is the Novena to Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, prayed for healing (in keeping with the extensive record of healings at San Giovanni Rotondo), for the conversion of family members, and for the gift of perseverance in the sacramental life. The novena is most commonly prayed in the nine days leading up to his feast on 23 September.

The most-prayed brief invocation of Saint Padre Pio:

Saint Padre Pio, you bore in your body the wounds of the Passion of Christ. Intercede for us, that we may take up our own crosses with patience as you took up yours, and that we may persevere in confession and the rosary as you taught your spiritual children to do.

Catholics commonly pair Saint Padre Pio devotions with the Holy Rosary, the Anima Christi, and the Surrender Novena of Don Dolindo Ruotolo (whose own holiness Padre Pio publicly affirmed during his lifetime). For the broader theological context, see Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints and Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan family from which the Capuchin Order sprang.

Sources

Footnotes

1. C. Bernard Ruffin, Padre Pio: The True Story (1982, third edition 2018). The standard English biography. Renzo Allegri, Padre Pio: Man of Hope (1996). The Capuchin Order archive at the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo preserves the principal documentary sources, including Padre Pio's extensive correspondence (published in five volumes as Epistolario di Padre Pio da Pietrelcina). ↩

2. The medical documentation of the stigmata is preserved in the Vatican archive of the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and in the Capuchin Order's archive at San Giovanni Rotondo. The principal medical investigations were conducted by Dr. Luigi Romanelli (1919) and Dr. Giorgio Festa (1920, 1925, 1955). ↩

3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 67-68 (private revelation) and 956-962 (the Communion of Saints). Pope Saint John Paul II, beatification homily of 2 May 1999 and canonization homily of 16 June 2002. Available at vatican.va. ↩

4. The Sanctuary of Padre Pio at San Giovanni Rotondo maintains comprehensive pilgrimage records and miracle documentation. The annual statistics on pilgrimage are published by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. ↩