Chapter 2 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio

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Chapter 2

Groaning, Padre Pio regained consciousness. Hard surface. Scent of roses. Was he dead and at his own funeral? Pio forced his eyes to open in spite of the headache threatening to strangle his thoughts. Glancing around at the limited area he could see from his position lying on the floor, he realized where he was: the choir loft. The early morning sunlight spilled through the one window and onto the floor where Pio lay. Trying to relieve the intense pain in his left side, he rolled over onto his right. That helped—a little. He raised his left hand to his forehead and tried to massage away at least enough of the pain to allow him to get up and return to his duties. But why did his forehead feel wet and sticky?

A sudden spasm of his lungs forced Pio to cough, breaking the otherwise-silent friary church. He pressed his hand to his mouth, trying to stop the coughing that shook his aching body. Blood! The metallic taste made him grimace. Obviously he was bleeding, but where? He tested his lips and the inside of his mouth with his tongue to determine if his mouth was bleeding, but couldn’t feel any injury.

The throbbing of Pio’s hands snagged his attention; he raised his left hand into sight and gasped at the wound in his palm that oozed fresh blood. What about the pain stabbing his feet? He moved his left leg just enough to see blood trickling from the red wound in the top of his sandaled foot. The burning pain in his left side now demanded his attention. He cautiously pressed on the rough brown fabric of his habit that lay against the painful area. More blood. Am I dying, bleeding to death? But the sudden flood into his consciousness of horrifying memories caused him to shudder and forget his question. The Being. The mysterious Being with bleeding wounds in his hands, feet, and side . . . shafts of light piercing Pio’s own hands, feet, and side. Victim. Had Pio been the victim of an evil spirit? But during this past week how many times had Pio offered himself to God as a victim for the end of the war and influenza epidemic, and for the salvation of the souls of sinners everywhere?

As the truth spread its light throughout his consciousness, Pio pressed his pierced and bleeding hands against the cold wooden floor and forced himself into a sitting position. He peered at the corpus on the ancient crucifix. “It was You, Lord, wasn’t it?” he whispered between trembling lips. I am not dying. And no mysterious Being had visited Pio; it had been a personaggio, a real live person. The Person. The Lord of the universe, the Lord of Love.

That Love now engulfed Pio, and he whispered in gratitude, “Thank You for answering my prayer.” He now knew that Jesus had given him the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ crucified, and Pio also knew he would not die from them. Hadn’t his spiritual father St. Francis of Assisi also received the stigmata almost seven centuries earlier? St. Francis. Just the thought of the beloved founder of the Franciscan Order of which Padre Pio was a member curled Pio’s lips into a smile which pain immediately transformed into a grimace and groan.

In spite of the unrelenting pain in his hands, feet, and side, Pio struggled to kneel once again before the crucifix. “Jesus, I don’t deserve the honor of bearing your wounds, but I trust You’ll use my suffering to achieve Your perfect will.” After Pio finished his thanksgiving he peered up at the loft’s one small window through which sunlight spilled. I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few minutes. He knew he had to get out of the church before anyone saw him. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to me, a sinner.

As he hobbled down the choir stairs on his aching feet, he raised a pierced hand to his mouth to silence his coughing. What if someone heard him and came to investigate? And why did he smell roses again? No one bothered to bring flowers to the church now that the World War had dragged into its fourth year. The local peasants needed every inch of land to grow food, not flowers, and no one in the area—including Pio and the other two friars—had enough money to provide the luxury of flowers for the altar.

As Pio stepped onto the main floor of the dimly lit church, he scanned the ancient interior, whose small size allowed room for only a center aisle and less than a dozen rows of pews. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw he was alone, and he limped toward the arch that opened into the corridor leading to the attached friary. Half-stumbling on throbbing feet, he trudged toward his cell. No need to worry about someone discovering him there. Yesterday after celebrating the feast of the stigmatization of St. Francis of Assisi, Padre Paolino—the friary’s superior though almost the same age as Pio—had left by mule for San Marco in Lamis. He shouldn’t be returning here for at least two days. And immediately after Holy Communion this morning, Fra Nicola the friary’s questor, with tattered pack on his back and walking stick in hand, had left to hike the almost-two rugged miles downhill to San Giovanni Rotondo to beg for food for Paolino, Pio, and himself. The handful of parishioners at this morning’s Mass would have long ago left for their fields, cottages, and families. Maria Orto? Poverina. Even she had left.

By the time he reached his small rectangular cell and closed the door behind him, Pio had made a decision. He pushed it to the back of his mind while he did his best to cleanse the five wounds and to bandage his feet, hands, and side with rags.

Hoping his efforts would stop the bleeding of all five wounds, Pio fell to his knees on the hard cold floor. “I would never ask You to take away the reality and the pain of my wounds, Lord, but I do ask You to take away their outward signs, including their smell.” At least two separate times since receiving the five wounds, the sweet scent of flowers had reached his nose, and he had finally been able to determine that their source was his own blood. Even now he couldn’t help but notice that the oozing hand wounds were once again exuding the scent of—was it roses, violets, lilies, all three?

Involuntarily flinching from the pain in his throbbing wounds, the young priest continued his plea, “No, Lord, never take away the pain, for I want You to inebriate me with pain and keep me always united with You on your cross. I want to make an offering of my sufferings as a never-ending prayer to You for the end of the war and the epidemic, and for the salvation of all the poor souls who will end up in hell if someone doesn’t suffer and pray for them, as Your Mother warned last year at Fatima.”

Now St. Paul’s familiar words to the Colossians, which Pio had memorized during his seminary days, paraded through his mind, and the stigmatized priest lifted them up to the Lord, as if to remind Him, as well as himself, that what Pio was asking was not impossible: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. The church; God’s people; all His children; everyone; everywhere. “Yes, give me the pain, Lord,” Pio whispered up at the cracked and peeling ceiling of his cell. “But I can’t bear the humiliation of anyone seeing these wounds. Take away the outward signs of the wounds, Jesus. Let me suffer without anyone knowing and without drawing attention to myself. Please.”

That evening Fra Nicola returned to the friary with enough food for the next few days. Moments later when he knocked on Pio’s cell door Nicola said through the closed door, “Come, Padre, and join me for some bread and cheese a local farmer gave me.”

What should I do? Pio thought, staring at his still-throbbing, bandaged hands. He didn’t want to risk having his fellow friar spy the bandages and ask questions. After forcing out a few coughs for added drama, Pio said through the closed door, “Forgive me, but I’m not feeling well.” That is true, Lord, Pio thought, glancing upward. “You go ahead, Nicola, and eat my share of the bread and cheese. Those bones of yours could use a little fat.” Pio added a chuckle for effect.

With Nicola’s footsteps echoing down the corridor toward the friary kitchen, Pio breathed a sigh of relief. Starting tomorrow, all Padre Pio would have to do, when in the presence of others, would be to make sure the sleeves of his habit and vestments constantly covered his hand wounds, and to keep the wounds in his feet hidden by wearing socks with his sandals. Nicola and Paolino would never have to find out about the stigmata. And in the meantime, surely the Lord would answer Pio’s prayers and take away all outward signs of the wounds and leave the young priest to suffer only the physical pain, as he so desired.

But what about the scent of flowers that occasionally arose from his wounds? Someone might wonder about the sweet aroma. If anyone notices, I’ll just change the subject or ignore their comments about the smell. Or even a timely bout of coughing might derail their curiosity.

Pio succeeded in keeping the stigmata hidden—until the following afternoon: While preparing the altar for the next morning’s Sunday Mass, he heard someone creak open the door of the friary church. Before turning toward the sound, he glanced down at his hands to make sure the sleeves of his habit covered the angry-red wounds. Satisfied, he peered down the aisle of the dimly lit church and recognized the tall, lean profile of one of his spiritual daughters, Nina Campanile. Her peasant scarf and ankle-length dress waffled in the breeze that she created as she hurried toward him.

When Nina had almost reached him, Pio noticed the lines of worry on her ruddy face and the terror in her dark eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asked when she stopped at the foot of the altar. “You were just here Wednesday to ask me to pray for your sister.” He noticed tears beginning to spill from Nina’s eyes, and her sudden sobbing alarmed him. “Is she worse?”

Realizing the young woman was too upset to answer, Pio said in his most-soothing voice, “Calm yourself, my daughter, and tell me everything.”

After a few deep breaths and sniffles, Nina explained in a shaking voice, her hands clasped in front of her as if pleading with God and with Pio, “Si, yes, Padre, it’s Vittoria.”

Fear stabbed Pio’s heart. Vittoria Campanile, Nina’s older sister, now married and six months pregnant. On Wednesday Nina had asked him for his prayers for Vittoria who had been forced into bed by the Spanish influenza now raging throughout southern Italy as well as the whole world. He recalled that many of the area’s pregnant women and their unborn children had already died because of the epidemic. But please, not Vittoria, he now silently prayed. With a forced smile belying his fear, Pio asked Nina, “Your sister; how is she now?”

Choking back a sob, Nina said, “My mamma thinks Vittoria is dying. If she dies, Padre, so will the baby inside her. Mamma asked me to run here to beg you to pray.” Nina pulled a wadded-up handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and held it out for him to take.

He could detect the outline of a few small, round, flat objects beneath the dust-colored homespun material of the handkerchief. Suspecting that the wad in her outstretched hand contained coins, Pio just stared at it. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Coins; all that we have. Mamma said to give it to you, Padre, as an offering so you’d say tomorrow’s Mass for Vittoria and her unborn child.” Nina’s dark, tear-filled eyes pleaded with him.

To avoid exposing the wounds in his hands, Pio merely shook his head. “No. You tell your mamma to keep the coins; you’ll need them for the doctor.” Then he smiled encouragement at Nina. “Now wipe your tears and go home to her and your sister and tell them not to worry. I’ll say Sunday Mass for Vittoria, she’ll recover, and her baby will be born strong and healthy. Now go, my child.”

But before Pio could turn and head for the sacristy to fetch what he needed to finish preparing the altar for the next morning’s Mass, Nina grabbed one of his hands and kissed it, as was the custom among the devout peasants of the area. “Molte grazie, thank you very much, Padre,” she said and then gasped when she spotted the oozing wound in the center of the back of his hand. “What happened? Padre, you’re bleeding!”

Embarrassed, humiliated, and angry at himself for being so careless, Pio jerked his hand out of Nina’s. The effort caused pain to throb from the hand wound, and the pain triggered a coughing spell. “Non importa, never mind,” he managed between coughs. “It’s just a little wound, so don’t worry.” After clearing his throat, he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and forced a reassuring smile at her. “Now go home and tell Vittoria she’ll soon be up and helping you and your mamma knead and bake the family’s bread dough.” As he watched Nina turn and leave, he was confident he had satisfied her curiosity. He resumed his preparations of the altar for the next morning’s Mass which he now planned to celebrate for the intentions Nina had brought before him.

That evening after returning to Our Lady of Grace and after stabling the friary’s one mule for the night, the stout Padre Paolino gave a weary smile and anemic greeting to Padre Pio and Fra Nicola and then plodded toward his cell for the night. Pio, knowing he had kept his wounds hidden from his superior’s normally astute gaze—and sense of smell—suppressed his own smile.

The next morning, Padre Pio celebrated Sunday’s first Mass which he offered for Vittoria Campanile and her unborn child, all the while hiding his wounds beneath the long sleeves of his vestments. Alone in the sacristy after the service, he removed the vestments, revealing the coarse brown habit which he venerated to the point of wearing it even when he slept. Since 1903 at age of sixteen when he had first received the Franciscan habit, which was traditionally made in the form of a cross, he had considered his life to be—like St. Paul’s—spiritually “crucified with Christ.” And only days ago, Lord, You physically crucified me, too, though I’m not worthy to bear your wounds or to even bear the name ‘Christian.’

Now Pio lovingly smoothed out the rough fabric of his sleeves, making certain they covered the
stigmata. The habit of St. Francis. It should really fly off my body in disgust and never return. When I began my novitiate all those years ago, I knew I was unworthy to wear it. And today I’m certain I’m even more unworthy. Pressing gently against the fabric over the wound in his side, he sighed in relief when he found his habit dry; no blood had seeped through the cloth he had used to bandage the wound two hours ago before leaving his cell. He now shuffled on swollen feet to the main body of the church where he began ministering to the peasants who had stayed to tell him their problems and to ask for his prayers.

Not more than fifteen minutes later, all five-and-a-half feet of the bespectacled Padre Paolino bolted into the church. He stayed just long enough to tell Pio he would be down the mountain in San Giovanni Rotondo until late that evening. Paolino had been summoned by a frantic peasant who demanded he come immediately and give the last sacraments to three of the village’s parishioners dying from influenza.

And not more than an hour later, forty-five-year-old Fra Nicola, with disheveled graying hair and beard, breezed into the friary church to inform Pio he would return that night after he helped a neighboring farmer repair the roof of the small barn in which the man had recently stored that summer’s entire crop of wheat. That left only Pio to minister the rest of the day to the peasants who would inevitably, as they did each day, climb up the rocky, potholed cattle track they called a “road” to the friary church to ask for prayers. “Padre, please pray for my son who’s in the Naples hospital with one leg blown off from the war.” “I beg you, Padre, pray for my brother who’s dying at home with the influenza.” “Pray for me, Padre, please, so the army won’t draft me; my young family needs me too much.”

Pio would always promise his heartfelt, constant prayers and assure them with, “Basta pregare—prayer is enough.”

That evening, by the time he had trudged into his cell and closed the door behind him, Pio had lost count of the number of local peasants who had petitioned him for prayers. Please take away their suffering, he prayed as he gently cleansed and re-wrapped his still-bleeding wounds. Protect and heal your people, Jesus. Let me suffer for them. To the corpus on the cross above his bed, Pio said, “Remember, Lord, when the beatings You received weakened You to the point where You collapsed beneath the cross your persecutors made You carry? Then the Jew, Simon of Cyrene, emerged from the crowd to help You carry your cross. Let me be the ‘Simon’ for your people, Jesus, helping them to bear their crosses.” With his five wounds throbbing with pain, Pio collapsed onto his narrow bed, barely noticing its unforgiving hardness and the voluntary absence of a pillow to cushion his head. He had kept his five wounds hidden for one more day, and for that he offered up thanks just before sleep claimed him for the night.

In the friary infirmary the next morning after 5 a.m. Mass, accompanied by Pio and Paolino, Dr. Giuseppe De Nittis from San Giovanni examined Pio’s students who lay prostrate on cots, suffering from various stages of the Spanish influenza. The moment Pio had stepped into the large one-room infirmary and inhaled the caustic odor of carbolic acid used as a disinfectant, he felt his lungs begin to congest, but the sight of the pale, pained faces of his young students made him forget immediately his own troubles. Following Paolino who followed the bald and elderly De Nittis, Pio fought back tears that threatened to spill from his eyes as he passed each cot and observed the suffering of each young patient. He heard the boys’ weak cries, saw their bodies contracted with pain, and smelled the vomit hiding in the bucket beside each cot. He wanted to stop and pray with each young patient, but Dr. De Nittis seemed to have other plans for the two priests.

After only a few moments in the infirmary, the doctor, peering through black-rimmed glasses, motioned Pio and Paolino into the hallway and closed the infirmary door behind them. Pio instinctively inhaled a few deep breaths of the hallway’s less-offensive air, trying to rid his lungs of the biting stench of carbolic acid and vomit. But even though a few subsequent coughs helped clear his lungs, nothing could rid his mind of the images of his sick students whose suffering still grieved him.

“I can’t keep up with the work in there.” Dr. De Nittis’ sudden statement interrupted Pio’s thoughts. The doctor’s bloodshot eyes pleaded with the two priests as he continued, “I have patients in town and patients up and down the mountain; patients on the brink of death, and those just diagnosed with influenza or just beginning to recover from it. And all of them needing my attention.”

Observing the doctor’s pale face pinched by exhaustion, and his hands perennially gnarled with arthritis and age, Pio’s heart ached for him as De Nittis added, “I’m going to show you both how to give injections, and you’ll have to give them to each of the boys—today.”

Padre Pio’s mind balked at the thought of jabbing someone—anyone—with the needle of a syringe. And what if, when administering an injection, the long sleeves of Pio’s habit slid backward and exposed his stigmata? “Perche? Why the two of us?” he now asked the doctor. “You could ask the local women to do it—the ones who come at mealtimes and in the evening to feed and check on the boys. Why would we have to?” Pio repeated.

“Yes, why?” echoed his superior.

“The women are busy enough when they come to feed and clean up the patients,” said De Nittis. “And as volunteers, they certainly don’t need the added burden of giving injections. Anyhow, the medicine you’ll give the boys will help them recover,” he added, smiling weakly at the two priests.

Encouraged by the disgruntled look he had just spied on his superior’s bearded face, Pio now squinted at the doctor. “I don’t know about Padre Paolino, but I’ve never given anyone an injection, and I don’t think I can do it now—not to those poor boys already suffering so much.”

The doctor sighed, letting his bony shoulders sag beneath the thin material of his white physician’s jacket. “You have no choice. I don’t have the time, and if you two don’t do it, many of those boys will probably die.”

Glancing back at the closed infirmary door, Padre Pio again recalled the images of his sick students, and the thought of their intense suffering gnawed at his heart. And his worries precipitated a coughing spell, in spite of the somewhat-clearer air of the hallway.

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