Chapter 6
Summer 1919
At the beginning of this hot early summer afternoon, choosing to pray his Rosary in the choir loft rather than join his fellow friars for the noon meal in the refectory, Padre Pio first glanced out the window overlooking the sagrato, the square or courtyard. Carefully staying out of their view, he studied the more than two dozen pilgrims who sat beneath the generous shade of the aged elm tree eating the meager lunches they had brought. He knew they waited for him to begin confessions. Feeling almost overwhelmed by what the Lord expected of him, Pio prayed silently, Of course I thank You, Jesus, for sending so many poor souls—more and more every day, in fact—up the mountain to confess, and I also thank You for using me to absolve them from their sins. But dear God, why didn’t You take away the visible stigmata You gave me, the visible wounds? I do want to suffer the pains of the wounds, but do you see what trouble their visibility causes the other friars? The crowds, the extra work, the loss of solitude.
Pio turned toward the crucifix before which he had received the stigmata and said, “Perche? Why? Why not allow me to continue to suffer the pains of the stigmata, but at the same time make them invisible? You can do anything, Jesus. Why not do that?” Pio held a wounded and gloved palm out to the realistic, pastel-yellow, crucified corpus. Knowing that arguing with God would accomplish nothing, Pio nevertheless continued in an accusing tone, “And now, because You’ve allowed word of the stigmata to spread only-You-know-how-far, what Padre Benedetto feared would happen has indeed happened. Not only do the sincere penitents come here, but so too do maligni, malicious persons, thieves, swindlers, and people drawn merely by their own vulgar curiosity.” As if the Lord didn’t already see everything, Pio nodded his head toward the scene in the square below. “Just look at those thieves down there selling as ‘relics’ pieces of rags stained with chicken blood. Somehow they manage to fool the poor pilgrims into believing it’s my blood from the stigmata. Every day pilgrims succumb to the schemes of swindlers like them who concoct all kinds of devious plans to steal their money.”
Now a single tear trickled down Pio’s cheek and into the dark mesh of his beard. “Mi dispiace, I’m sorry, Jesus,” he whispered, as if the crowd below might hear him. “Please forgive my complaining. I accept everything from Your loving hands for the salvation of souls.”
Later that afternoon during confessions, white-bearded Fra Guistino, gasping for breath as if he’d raced to Padre Pio’s confessional, poked his balding head inside, smiled meekly at the priest, and silently handed him a message. “Grazie, thank you,” Pio said, tucking it into the pocket of his habit. As Guistino quickly bowed his head in respect, turned, and marched toward the exit, Padre Pio continued listening to the penitent who had patiently waited, kneeling on the other side of the thin partition and small eye-level, dark-screened door that hid her from him.
When the woman had finished iterating her list of sins, she waited silently for a penance and absolution from Padre Pio, but must have been shocked when he asked her in his sternest voice, “And what do you plan to do about the money you stole from your employer?”
“Che? What?” she asked in a hoarse cry of surprise. “Che cosa ha ditto? What did you say?”
In spite of her apparent incredulity, Padre Pio refused to retract his question, knowing that the Lord had revealed the woman’s un-confessed and greatest sin to him. “You heard me,” Pio growled, “the stolen money. What do you plan to do about it?” He could hear her sobbing now, but he refused to ease up on her. I know You’ll call me to account, Jesus, on the Day of Judgment, if I don’t look after the wellbeing of her eternal soul. “Since you don’t want to tell me what you should do about that money,” Pio growled, “I will tell you!” In a harsh voice pitched low enough so that the other penitents in the small friary church couldn’t hear, Pio ordered the woman to go home to Foggia, return the money to her employer, and then make a thorough confession to her local parish priest.
“But, Padre, I can’t return the money,” she said, choking on her tears.
“That’s right; you can’t because you’ve already spent it. Che sciocca! What a fool!” Pio sadly shook his head. After coughing into his gloved hand and clearing his throat which felt parched from the hours of counseling he’d already done that morning and hot afternoon in the stuffy confines of the confessional, he continued, “You can’t return the money, but you can offer to work off your debt.”
Almost in a whisper, the woman humbly said, “Si, Padre, I will do as you say.”
With a sigh of relief, Pio congratulated her with, “Splendido! For your penance, go and do as you have promised to the Lord and to me.” As he gave her absolution, he slowly and reverently made the Sign of the Cross in her direction with his pierced and bleeding hand. “Go in peace. Sei in grazia di Dio. You are in the grace of God.” Oh my Jesus, he added silently, if only I felt that peace in my own soul. But my constant companion is the fear of offending You. Oh my God, when will you relieve this torment? Heaven, as usual, gave him no answer, or at least none that he recognized.
Not until an hour later when Padre Pio gave absolution to the last penitent, did he hobble on swollen feet out of the dim light of the confessional and down the hallway to his cell where he read the message Fra Guistino had handed him. Sinking wearily onto the hard bed that waited for him like a faithful friend in his small cell, Pio left his fingerless gloves on as he opened the piece of paper on which someone had typed a message.
What Padre Pio read made his head ache as if with a migraine, and pain shot through his chest, forcing him to double over with coughing. Letting the paper fall to the floor, he let himself fall backward onto the hard, thin mattress, as if the words of the message had almost killed him. This can’t be, Jesus, he silently prayed as he stared at the cracked ceiling above him. It must be a joke; a terrible joke. But he knew it wasn’t. Haven’t my stigmata caused enough trouble already? With the dramatic growth of Pio’s ministry as the flood of pilgrims to Our Lady of Grace friary steadily increased since word about the stigmata had begun to spread after September of last year, had come doctors sent by the Provincial Padre Benedetto as well as by the Vatican to inspect Pio’s stigmata and to ask him a seemingly unending list of questions in regard to the wounds and his own general health, both mental and physical. Padre Pio had endured painful humiliations because of all of that, as well as because of rumors, criticisms, and accusations surrounding the stigmata. Even the secular priests down the mountain in San Giovanni are speaking out against me, Pio now thought.
His beloved spiritual directors Padres Benedetto and Agostino had assured Pio in their letters that the priests were just jealous because Pio’s growing fame attracted the secular priests’ parishioners up the mountain to Our Lady of Grace friary and away from their own parish priests. One of the parish priests Don Giovanni Miscio had even written to newspapers, to the Capuchin minister general, and to the Vatican, accusing Pio and his fellow friars of making money off the pilgrims. Sadness now threatened to overwhelm Pio as he recalled the ugly actions that had been taken against him and his fellow friars.
With tears now spilling down his cheeks and into the dark mesh of his beard, and in spite of the stabbing pain the movement of the coarse material of his habit caused his side wound, Pio sat up and read again the message from the Capuchin headquarters:
"Dear Padre Pio,
As you know, in spite of our orders to Padre Benedetto to not allow word of your
stigmata to leak to the public, an article about it recently appeared in the Naples
newspaper Mattino. The sensationalism caused by this unwanted publicity has
prompted us, during our most recent Chapter meeting, to elect Padre Pietro of
Ischitella to replace Benedetto as Provincial. Also, Benedetto will no longer act as
your spiritual director. We also voted to transfer the father guardian Padre Paolino
from Our Lady of Grace to the friary at Gesualdo. Your new father guardian will
be Padre Lorenzo of San Marco in Lamis. In addition, we have received word from
the Vatican saying the Holy Office has ordered a week-long medical examination
of you and the stigmata by Dr. Amico Bignami of the University of Rome. He is an
atheist, and so the Vatican believes he will give an unbiased evaluation."
With the words of the Chapter meeting letter clawing at his mind and heart, Pio stared upward through his tears at Christ crucified on the cross hanging above his bed. Why did You take away Padre Benedetto, one of my best friends and strongest supports? It wasn’t his fault that word about the stigmata leaked to the public. I don’t know whose fault it was, but it wasn’t his. You know very well, Lord, that he ordered complete secrecy. Padre Pio figured that Rome had blamed Benedetto and the Capuchins, and that the Capuchins, in turn, had used Benedetto as their scapegoat. If the truth were known, the seminarians who study here would’ve been enough to spread the word about the stigmata to all of Italy and even beyond.
Peering again at the letter he still held in his gloved hand, Pio’s inner pain grew to an almost-unbearable strength when he read, “We also voted to transfer the father guardian Padre Paolino.” The beloved Benedetto and Paolino, suddenly yanked from Padre Pio’s life! Why, Lord? Sighing, Pio now thought about having to soon endure another embarrassing, painful examination of the stigmata—this time for eight long days by a stranger, a Dr. Amico Bignami from Rome. Again, Lord, I ask You why? But Pio knew it would be useless to argue with God or with the Capuchin officials.
Padre Pio stared upward again at his crucified Lord on the cross hanging on the white-washed wall above his bed. Shame now shot through him when he contemplated Christ’s Passion. “I offered myself to You as a victim, Lord, and here I am complaining about my sufferings. Please forgive me. Let me join You on the cross; unite me to Yourself and use me to continue Your suffering here on earth for the salvation of souls.” Pio smiled as he remembered how the Mother of God, two years ago, had asked for sacrifices when she appeared to three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal. “Sacrifices, Lord,” Pio now said, shame once again piercing his heart and soul. “Your immaculate and virginal Mother asked everyone to offer up their sufferings, big or small, to God as prayers for humanity. Unworthy though I am, Jesus, I once again offer myself to You as a victim to share in Your sufferings for the salvation of all.” Pio knew this offering of himself would not take away the pain of losing his beloved friends Benedetto and Paolino, or the mental and physical pains the coming eight-day examination would cause him, but now he could offer genuine thanks for those opportunities to suffer for the benefit of others.
Spiritually abandoning himself to God, Pio continued to contemplate the pastel-yellow corpus whose dramatic expression seemed to beg him to share in Christ’s sufferings. Yet a palpable peace began to spread throughout the young priest’s mind, body, and soul, and a smile budded on his lips. Now enveloped in God’s loving embrace, Pio was able to forget, at least for the moment, the increasingly large numbers of pilgrims who traveled up the mountain to Our Lady of Grace friary and church to beg prayers and blessings from him, the now-famous stigmatic, and to confess to him. But out of those hundreds of visitors, only a handful of people, including his close friends Padres Paolino, Benedetto, and Agostino, knew that Padre Pio was traveling further and more frequently than any of the pilgrims—without ever leaving San Giovanni Rotondo!
Now, still contemplating Christ’s passion, Padre Pio was barely aware of the dimming light in his small cell as that summer evening’s sun disappeared behind the monastery’s garden wall outside his window. “Oh my Jesus,” he whispered up at the crucifix above his bed, “I am ready to do whatever You will for me. Use me, Lord, to help Your hurting people, because I know that You, in Your great love for them, feel their every pain.” As if in answer to Pio’s prayer, the Spirit of God, in an instant, mysteriously transported him to a location hundreds of miles away.
When Pio arrived at the unfamiliar location, he was aware, as was usual in these “travels” of his, that he had been bilocated, caused to be in two places at one time. But as usual, he wasn’t certain if God had transported his body or soul or both. Only last week Padre Paolino had received word from the Vatican that Padre Pio had been seen at a recent canonization in St. Peter’s Square, but Paolino had been with Pio during that exact time period, and so Paolino knew the stigmatic had never left the friary.
From Scripture and the biographical information Padre Pio had read about the saints, he knew that the Spirit of God had bilocated many believers before him, including America’s St. Mother Cabrini. The book of Acts in the Bible also assured Pio that God had bilocated people even in Jesus’ time, including Christ’s disciple Philip who, after baptizing the important eunuch, disappeared because “the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip” miles away to the city of Azotus.
Now on this sultry summer evening, without any effort on his part, Padre Pio had suddenly left the stuffiness of his small cell and had found himself in the front yard of an old, ramshackle farmhouse nestled in a valley along a narrow creek whose waters he could hear sloshing against the nearby rocky bank. Where am I? he wondered. The cool air wafting toward him from the creek made him shiver beneath his long brown habit. Scanning the yard, he could see no other persons, but only a lone platoon of pines standing at attention as if guarding the three dirty-white cows that huddled silently together beneath the bottom branches. Why am I here, Lord?
From the direction of the house a mother’s sudden shrill cry for help reached his ears, and he knew the “why.”
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