Chapter 10 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio

TEARS OF LOVE

Chapter 10
Christmas Eve, 1928–October 1, 1929

Christmas Eve, Mama begged Mary Pyle to help her climb the hill to the friary church. So in spite of the snowstorm that had swept up the mountain from the Gulf of Manfredonia, Maria l’Americana, clad in her long brown habit into which she had stuffed newspapers to protect her flesh from the biting winds, assisted Padre Pio’s mother as the older woman staggered the one-hundred yards up the hill, bravely pressing her weak body into the fierce wind.

Ten minutes before Mass, Padre Pio hobbled out of the sacristy to greet his mother whom Mary had found room for in the front right pew near the sacristy door, while Mary had to kneel in the aisle beside her since the rest of the pews were full and pilgrims had packed the sides and back of the tiny church too. Seeing his mother wearing only a thin coat, the Padre glared at Mary Pyle. “E pazza, are you crazy? First you bring my little mother all the way from Pietrelcina during the worst winter weather we’ve had in a decade, and now you let her come to church without a heavy coat.”

Before Mary could explain, Maria Giuseppa, her blue eyes softened by her great love for her son, said, “Don’t be upset with her, Francesco. It’s my fault, not hers. I insisted she bring me here.” A weak smile decorated Maria Giuseppa’s pale face.

Switching his glare from Mary to his mother, Pio couldn’t keep his heart and voice from softening. “But look at what you’re wearing, Mammella.” He sighed, shaking his head back and forth. “Fa cattivo tempo; it’s bad weather, to say the least. You’ll catch pneumonia wearing such a thin coat.”

With Mary Pyle, clad in her long, coarse-brown habit, kneeling beside her as she sat in the pew, Maria Giuseppa smiled weakly at her son. “That’s not Mary’s fault either, Francesco. She offered me a fur coat someone had left at her home.”

“And of course you refused to wear it, Mama.” Pio wanted to add, “Testarda, obstinate person!” but respectfully did not.

“Naturalmente, of course,” Maria replied with all the innocence of a child. “You want your mother to look like a rich and important lady?”

Pio let his shoulders slump. “No, Mama, but still, your health.”

“It’s too late to worry about my health,” she said, reaching out a gnarled hand to lovingly touch his cheek.

Pio steeled himself for the words he feared were next.

“I’ve come here to die.”

Even though he knew the futility of doing so, Pio argued, “No, Mama, we’ll get you to un medico tomorrow and he’ll give you some penicillina and . . . .”

Maria Giuseppa gently placed her finger against her son’s lips. “I’ve come here so I can die near you, my son. It will give me great comfort to have you by my side at the moment the angels and Our Lady come to take me to be with Our Lord.”

In spite of Padre Pio’s intense prayers the rest of that day and night for the return of good health for his mother, after attending her son’s 5 a.m. Christmas Mass the next morning and after returning through the blistering weather to Mary Pyle’s home, Maria Giuseppa collapsed. Mary carried the now-barely-ninety-pound woman to one of the guest rooms, placed her on the soft bed, and immediately sent one of her other guests to get Dr. DeNittis, in spite of the fact it was Christmas day. As soon as the elderly bald doctor left her villa, Mary sent another of her guests to Padre Pio to tell him that his mother was coughing up blood and had been diagnosed with double pneumonia.

During the next nine days, in spite of his heavy schedule and poor health, Pio spent every moment he could spare at his mother’s bedside. When he wasn’t in the church-like stillness of her room, where together they found it so natural to meditate and pray, people urged to him to ask God for un miracolo, a miracle, but Pio knew the only miracle God had earmarked for Maria Giuseppa was the greatest miracle of all: eternal life. “God’s will be done,” he would tell everyone, his heart heavy with sorrow.

Someone argued, “But you healed Dr. Ricciardi the aetheist; you healed the village beggar Francesco Santarello and countless others. Surely you can heal your own mother who is such a holy woman.”

Pio patiently reminded the individual, “I have no power to heal. Only God can heal and only when He chooses to do so. All I can do is pray, Pater Noster, fiat voluntas tua. Our Father, thy will be done.”

Before dawn on January 3, only nine days after her collapse in Mary Pyle’s villa, Maria Giuseppa de Nunzio Forgione received the last rites from her son. And on that bitterly cold morning, only one hour before Padre Pio was to begin his 5 a.m. Mass, Maria Giuseppa kissed the crucifix she held in her gnarled hands and, with a sweet smile on her thin, seemingly bloodless lips, died, her priest-son kneeling and praying beside her bed.

Slowly, reverently Pio kissed his mother’s forehead and, in the presence of Mary Pyle and two of his fellow friars, he collapsed on the floor. “Mama,” he muttered, “you loved me so much.” Between sobs he continued to mumble words of sorrow and devotion, “Mama mia, my beautiful mother, you sacrificed so much for me.”

The stout Padre Vigilio helped Pio to his feet but needed the assistance of the other friar to get the distraught stigmatic to a separate guest room on Mary Pyle’s first floor. “Mammella, my sweet and holy mother,” Pio muttered, tears streaming down his cheeks and into his dark beard, as the two friars eased him into bed. Trying to focus through his tears on the sorrowful face of Padre Vigilio above him, Pio said, “She loved me so much, you know.” A moan escaped Pio’s lips; he closed his eyes and continued to sob.

Shocked by the intensity of the stigmatic’s grief, Vigilio tucked the covers snugly against his friend’s neck and tried to console him. “Surely your saintly mother is in heaven now, so you don’t need to feel badly; try not to cry.”

Blinking back his tears, Padre Pio gazed tenderly at Vigilio. “I know, my son, I know, but you must understand that these are tears of love.”

“Tears of love” continued to flow from Padre Pio’s eyes for the next week. His heavy heart prevented him from even getting out of bed long enough to leave Mary’s house and return the one hundred yards uphill to the friary and church to fulfill his duties. During the next couple of days Pio couldn’t even attend his mother’s funeral. Instead, he mourned from his first-floor room at Mary’s house and watched from the two large windows as the cortege inched down the hill and toward the cemetery. He barely noticed Mary’s snow-covered front garden with its almond trees shrouded in white, the fields that months ago were ripe with grain, the horizon that led to the Gulf of Manfredonia, and the vast plains of the Pugliese. But Pio was with the cortege in prayer and in spirit, and his presence comforted them in their mourning, even though nothing seemed to ease his own grief.

Even when he was finally able to return to his duties, his confreres often heard Padre Pio quietly weeping and muttering, “Oh, Mama, my sweet and holy mama.” Often his thoughts would fly back to his childhood. He recalled how his mother Giuseppa had always showered kindness and care, not only on her family but on anyone in the village who needed her, and people had fondly called her “Mama Peppa.” Even now, weeks after her death, Pio could almost smell the bread she would bake before dawn for her family and he could almost taste the mellow cheese she would make from the milk of the family goat. Poor Mammella, he now thought, you worked so hard, even fetching water every day from the Madunnella Spring. How he had loved, as a little boy, to accompany her on those treks and to imitate his mother’s devotion as she knelt and prayed at the little shrine someone had erected near the Spring to honor the Queen of Heaven, St. Michael the Archangel, and St. Anthony.

During that cold winter of 1929, only weeks after his mother’s death, Padre Pio found a small measure of comfort in recalling his days as little Francesco Forgione. Such a hard life, he now thought, but our family was so full of love for each other and our neighbors and God. He remembered how, in spite of that hard life, Mama had always made sure the Forgiones properly celebrated the great feasts of the Church, especially Christmas and Easter. Pio could remember the Christmas zeppole which he used to eat until he could hold no more, and the Easter sweets his mother would make that even now made his mouth water just thinking about them. Every year he had hungrily watched as she used sugar, flour, rice, ricotta cheese, and eggs to make the traditional candies, breads, and the tortano, a cake-like dessert that embraced a whole egg in its center.
Now Pio recalled how, even though his parents seldom had ten lire in the house, Maria Giuseppa would share what food they had with the poorest families in Pietrelcina. Each year she would give some of the produce from their small rocky plot of ground as an offering for a novena of Masses to be said for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Thanks to his mother’s deep faith, the ever-increasing number of souls from Purgatory who continued to visit Pio and beg him for his prayers for their release into Heaven brought his fearless and unwavering cooperation and help.

Throughout the rest of that winter of 1929, as always, Pio never wavered in his service to all the souls—both from this earthly life and that of Purgatory—who sought his prayers, advice, and spiritual gifts. And finally the fierce winter winds that had relentlessly buffeted the friary and church from the Adriatic Sea and Gulf of Manfredonia, bringing with them heavy snows, changed to the soft, warm breezes of spring. March, 1929, witnessed the friary garden’s almond trees bursting with pink blossoms and the ancient cypress and pines sighing beneath the gentle caresses of the March breezes as if relieved that spring had finally arrived. Even the birds, like the goldfinch whose dull winter feathers were gradually turning bright yellow, seemed grateful for warmer weather.

Padre Pio’s period of mourning ended along with the icy winter, and he had returned to his usual heavy workload which allowed him little time for himself, including no more than four hours sleep each night. During those usual four hours, on the night of May 5, 1929, a powerful prophetic dream invaded Pio’s mind. In it, the late sixteenth-century Pope Pius V informed Pio that the stigmatic’s adversary, the local Archbishop Gagliardi, the “boss” of all of Manfredonia’s Catholics, including those of Our Lady of Grace church and friary—including Padre Pio—would soon be ousted. The shock of the prophecy startled Pio awake and triggered a coughing spell that forced him to sit up and stare into the pre-dawn darkness of his cell.

Gagliardi deposed? The archbishop had sent a continual stream of scathing accusations about Padre Pio and his friars to Rome, a stream that hadn’t stopped since it had begun early in 1919. Gagliardi had caused twenty years of trouble for Pio and his friars. And now the dream predicted the archbishop would be ousted. But he’s so powerful, even with the Vatican, Pio now thought. Then he recalled the letter he had sent to his beloved friend and spiritual director Padre Agostino shortly after the barrage of hate had begun to spew from Gagliardi toward Pio and his fellow friars: “Why are they doing this to me?” Padre Pio had written in that November 1919 letter. “I’ve done nothing to Archbishop Gagliardi—or to Rome.” Pio couldn’t help but now recall the vicious lies Gagliardi had promoted—and still was promoting—to the Vatican about him. It threw Pio into another coughing spasm as he sat alone on his narrow hard bed.

When the Padre recovered enough from coughing to continue thinking clearly about Gagliardi and the prophetic dream of this night of May 5, 1929, Pio wondered again how a prelate as powerful as the archbishop could suddenly be kicked out of office. And why?

Then Pio remembered Padre Agostino’s reply to his November 1919 letter and it made the dream of this night suddenly plausible: “The archbishop is jealous of you, my son,” Agostino had written. “He is a vile man, unworthy of the priesthood. One day his lies about you will come to light, and you will be exonerated. I have heard from trustworthy sources that the archbishop is hiding unspeakable sins concerning himself and a woman. Yes, my son, he is jealous of your sanctity. He is jealous of the crowds your gifts from God attract to your friary and church—to you, my son—and away from his own church and from the secular priests who serve under him. One day our Lord will reveal the truth.”

The truth? During the next five months, in spite of the usual controversary and rumors caused by Gagliardi’s lies which circulated throughout southern Italy and even at Our Lady of Grace friary and church, Padre Pio hung on, as always, to the “truth” he daily searched for and found in Scripture. Feeling a kinship with his favorite author St. Paul who, like Pio, willingly suffered for Christ and His church all the tribulation, distress, and persecutions God allowed to come into his life, Pio claimed the promise in St. Paul’s words inspired by the Holy Spirit: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

On October 1, 1929, Pio sat inside at one of the friary windows overlooking the garden, his coarse brown shawl pulled around his shoulders to protect him from the autumn chill that, without central heating in the friary, had free reign to roam the corridors and penetrate the flesh and bones of the residents of the friary. Even the friary’s aging mutt Berta seemed to mind the cold, and Pio often wanted to drape his brown shawl over the poor creature of God. But now, as the dying leaves fell from the garden’s deciduous trees and the last of summer’s heat-craving birds like the bee-eaters fled to warmer climates, he peacefully meditated on God’s wisdom in causing one season to follow the other and in giving a purpose to each. So deep in contemplation was he, Pio almost didn’t hear the timid voice of young Friar Tommaso speak his name. The tall, willowy new friar, silenced by awe in the presence of the famous Padre sitting before him, pressed a note into Pio’s hand. After one last glance at God’s handiwork in the garden outside his window, Pio sighed and smiled a welcome at the red-headed youth towering above him. Before Pio could thank him, Tommaso had kissed his gloved hand, bowed, turned, and dashed toward the friary office.

Padre Pio smiled at the retreating figure and hollered, “Molte grazie, thank you very much, my son!” Pio still grinned as he unfolded the note in his hand, but as he read it, his lips collapsed into a frown. He discovered that the “truth” Padre Agostino had predicted almost ten years ago had finally been revealed, and that Pio’s prophetic dream of only five months ago had come to pass. According to the note in his hand, the very note from the Provincial, Archbishop Gagliardi, indeed, had been ousted, forced into retirement! But instead of rejoicing that his persecutor had finally been silenced, Pio prayed for him, that Jesus would have mercy on Gagliardi and help him to now live a better, holier life, one where he could find the peace that had eluded him for so long. Jesus’ words echoed through Pio’s soul: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”

In his love for everyone, even Gagliardi, Padre Pio refused to allow himself to feel any relief or even any gratitude that his life would be less complicated without Gagliardi in the picture. And then something—Someone—whispered a warning in Pio’s soul, a warning declaring that his tribulations would not end with Gagliardi’s forced retirement. No, Pio would still have to deal with formidable enemies—even enemies that lived in Rome!
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