Chapter 9 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio

DON’T CRY, MAMMA

Chapter 9
“Mammella!” Pio cried again, finally releasing his mother from his embrace. Grinning, he eagerly studied the deeply wrinkled, still-beautiful-to-him face of the stooped-yet-stately peasant woman. But a sudden realization stabbed his heart, turning his smile into a frown: This always-intensely devout woman, Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio Forgione, had aged beyond her sixty-nine years since he had last seen her. Now she seemed so shrunken and frail—and so troubled. Lovingly studying the sharp features of her solemn face, her sad, blue eyes that betrayed exhaustion and anxiety, he asked, “How long has it been, Mama, since we last saw each other?”

“Too long, Francesco, my priest-son, too long,” she said in a voice that sounded weary and old.

Yes, too long, he thought, guilt stabbing him as he regretted his inability, since September 20, 1918, to travel the long, rocky, mountainous road that joined the friary to Pietrelcina, his childhood home. To banish the feelings of guilt, he now reminded himself of the impossibility of his traveling to that ancient village in a mule cart over the eighty-some tortuous miles, and then back again to the friary. Then once again he realized the frailty of the almost-seventy-year-old figure before him. “But how did you get here, Mama? You must be worn out.” He ushered her over to the wooden bench at the side of the huge wardrobe. As he helped his mother to ease onto the seat, he tried to lighten the mood with, “Did Papa bring you in that rickety old mule cart of his? The last time I saw his asino, his donkey, the poor decrepit animal looked about as capable of traveling up the mountain to this friary as la mia poltrona, my armchair.”

Her son’s humor succeeded in raising a smile from Mama’s thin, colorless lips as she replied, “Your friend, l’Americana Maria, Mary Pyle, when she last visited your papa and me and found out how badly I wanted to see you, my priest-son, she gave me enough money to take a stagecoach to see you, and she invited me to stay in her home.”

“Magnifico; great!”

Her cheeks tinged red with embarrassment, Mama added, “Please know that I didn’t want to accept her charity, but she was very persuasive, Francesco.”

“Ma si; but yes,” Pio agreed, shaking his head in agreement about the stubborn-yet-holy nature of Mary Pyle. But it pleased Pio to know that his dear mother was still as humble as ever, not wanting to accept charity, preferring ‘sister poverty,’ as St. Francis always called it—the poverty of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

And now Mary Pyle’s suggestion she had made to Pio weeks ago drifted into his consciousness: Mary Pyle—always almost too-generous with her inheritance money—had asked him to give her permission to pay for his mother to travel comfortably in a stagecoach to visit him. A sigh of relief and gratitude now escaped him as he smiled at his mother’s deeply wrinkled face weathered to an almost-leather-like quality after years of hard work in the southern Italian sun in the Forgione family’s rocky field. Life had never been easy for her or for her ruggedly handsome, devoted husband Grazio (Orazio) Forgione. Pio now recalled the many times he—the boy Francesco—had early each weekday morning accompanied his parents to the family field, praying the Rosary aloud with them and his siblings as they all plodded behind the one small brown donkey that carried their tools and other supplies for the day’s work ahead of them. Now Pio remembered how, during each late-afternoon rocky journey homeward, each family member’s face would be masked by dust and perspiration, and yet in spite of the endless hard work Maria Giuseppa would face once they all reached their one-story, two-room house in the poorest section of Pietrelicina, Mama always remained positive and eager to serve her family. He remembered the peaceful smile on her tired face as she balanced a basket of vegetables on her head. He now smiled as he recalled how her long brown hair would sometimes slip from its clasp and fall over her narrow shoulders which helped support the heavy burden of vegetables she had gathered that day.

“Mammella, my little holy mother,” Pio now whispered affectionately as he stood before her, happy that he could have at least offered her a brief rest, even though on the hard sacristy bench.

At his words, Maria Giuseppa seemed to call upon some hidden energy reserve and, with the sudden intensity of her light-blue eyes piercing her son’s dark ones, stood up. But to Pio’s surprise, she immediately fell to her knees before him. “You are wrong, Francesco.”

Embarrassed by her sudden act of meekness, Pio tried to pull her into a standing position, but she firmly resisted with what had to have been the last of her meager strength. Almost sharply, she said, “It is not I who am holy, Francesco, my priest-son; it is you! Everywhere, they are calling you ‘Saint,’ and I believe that is truly what you are; God’s chosen saint.”

Much to Pio’s chagrin, Maria Giuseppa, quickly and without warning, grasped his sandaled feet and kissed them. Tears glistened in her eyes as she stared up into her son’s dark ones and said in a voice heavy with sorrow, “How can we know God doesn’t look upon us as great sinners that are going to hell? We try to make a good confession, but what if we forget something that God will hold against us forever? Maybe we’ve done something we didn’t even know was a sin. What then?”

Surely this holy woman at his feet, her tearful eyes pleading with him, was not worried about having made a poor confession or about going to hell? He had never known his mother to utter one curse word or to criticize anyone unfairly or to refuse food to any beggar. Before him knelt the woman who, along with her devout husband Orazio, had, through their words and daily actions, instilled strong Christian values into the souls of each of their children. But now recognizing the anguish in her blue eyes, Pio gently said, “Don’t worry, my sweet Mammella. The mercy of God is unfathomable, so that even if you had committed the worst sin imaginable, as long as you sincerely turn to Him and ask pardon, He will not hesitate for even an instant to forgive you and to cleanse your soul, even of the sins you may have forgotten or not known as sin, making your soul as pure as at your baptism.”

Helping his frail, now-smiling mother to stand, Pio said, “Let’s go out to the garden, Mammella, where we can talk.”

Her son’s suggestion brought a smile to Maria Giuseppa’s weary face, and she wiped the tears away with a thin, gnarled hand.

On their slow journey to the friary garden, Pio enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine on his aching shoulders, and the warmth of the friars’ smiles as they greeted their famous Padre who hobbled on swollen feet beside his stooped and smiling mother whose labored gait perfectly matched his. Even the cackling and squabbling of a few of the friary’s chickens along the way gave Pio pleasure as he held his mother’s arm so she wouldn’t fall on the rocky path.

Once he and his mother reached the garden, Pio smiled as they passed a handful of friars playing bocce on a long, narrow expanse of soft grass. He knew that soon some of those same friars would be splitting wood in the garden and stacking it for winter’s use. Padre Pio led Giuseppa Forgione over to the nearest stone bench, brushed it off with his gloved hand to prevent her white skirt from soiling, and helped her to sit down. He pulled a piece of hard candy from his pocket. “Here, Mama, suck on this until you have a chance to get something more substantial in the refectory.”

“God bless you, my priest-son.” Graciously she accepted the sweet, but as if once again preoccupied by troublesome thoughts, she merely stared at it in her open palm. Finally she tucked the candy into the pocket of her skirt and peered up at her son who still stood before her. “Per favore, please sit beside me, Francesco. I need to tell you something.”

The sudden dark tone of his mother’s voice prompted Pio to quickly plant himself beside her and to silently wait for whatever she might say. Whatever it was, her eyes warned him that is wasn’t good. He pulled a checkered handkerchief from his pocket and coughed into it. The hot, dry air—made only slightly cooler by the shade of the almond trees hovering around the bench—irritated his always-troubled lungs. Worried about what his mother might say next, he barely noticed the evening songs of the nightingales or the chanting of an evening prayer of a fellow friar who was strolling along an adjacent path.

Before Pio could prompt his mother to speak, she said, “You must do something about your sister.”

“Which sister?” he asked, pretending he didn’t already know exactly who his mother meant.

“Pellegrina.” Maria Giuseppa spoke the name as if it scalded her throat.

Pellegrina. Pio recalled how his younger sister had broken their mother’s heart by getting pregnant out of wedlock, not just once, but twice, to two different men. But thank God, Pellegrina kept the babies! Though Pio thought she was outwardly the most beautiful of his three sisters, he knew that inwardly her sinful ways shrouded her soul and would do so forever if she didn’t turn from her sins before it was too late. Give me strength, Lord, Pio silently begged. “Tell me, Mammella, all about her and what it is that you want me to do.”

With tears coursing over the deep wrinkles of her face, Maria Giuseppa said, “Maybe it was a combination of her husband Antonio deserting her and the deaths of her two babies Maria and Alfredo that has driven Pellegrina to do the things she’s done, but Francesco, when is she going to turn to God and follow the path He has set before her?” In a hoarse whisper, Mama continued, “What have I done wrong, my priest-son, that has made this daughter of mine go astray? This is why God must surely want to condemn me. He surely cannot forgive whatever it is I did or did not do in raising Pellegrina that caused her to turn away from Him.”

The agony in his mother’s voice tore at Pio’s heart. He tenderly touched her cheek as he stared into her eyes. “Believe, Mammella, you did nothing wrong in raising Pellegrina. You treated her exactly the same way you treated all of us. Look, your son Michele is a hard-working husband and father; your daughter Felicita, before she died, lived an exemplary life with her family; your daughter Grazia lives a holy life as a nun; and the son before you, well, at least I’ve never been in jail!” His weak attempt to make his mother smile failed. “Mama, you’ve done nothing wrong; please believe me.”

Maria Giuseppa looked hopefully at her son through her tears. “If only I could,” she whispered.

“You can, Mama. Just remember Our Lord himself chose His disciples and taught them all the same things in the same way and ‘raised’ them, so to speak, to follow His divine example. But did they all do that? No. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus.”

Shock registered on Maria’s face and in her voice as she said, “Grazie a Dio; good heavens! You’re saying Pellegrina is a Judas? She might be wayward, Francesco, but she certainly is not evil and certainly not to be compared to a scoundrel like Judas Iscariot!”

Padre Pio sighed. “No, Mama, you’re correct; she’s not a scoundrel or evil. She’s my sweet sister; I love her and want to help her; I’d even lay down my life for her, Mama. Tell me what you’d like me to do to help her. A letter?”

“No, Francesco; you must go to her,” Maria Giuseppa said without hesitation.

“But she lives hundreds of miles away in Chieti; and you know I can’t leave the friary! You know my wounds, health problems, and tremendous workload prevent me from traveling.”
With her thin, colorless lips pressed in a determined line, Maria Giuseppa Forgione shook her white-scarved head up and down in agreement. “Si, I know you can’t travel—in your body.”

Stunned by the realization that she somehow knew about him traveling in spirit, Pio just stared at her as she continued, “Don’t look at me that way, Francesco, as if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s well-known in Pietrelcina how you visited Orazio, your father, when he was working in America. He told me himself how you appeared to him and saved him from falling to his death at the place where he worked. And your brother Michele told us all how, when he too was working in America, you appeared at his sickbed where he was dying of influenza. He said you placed your bleeding hand on his forehead and healed him. We have heard many other stories, too, and we believe them, Francesco.”

Staring into her son’s eyes with the same fire he had seen flash in them during his childhood when she had ordered him to eat broccoli or to clean out the donkey’s stall, she said, “Go to Pellegrina and convince her she must return to God before it’s too late.”

Knowing it was futile to argue with this woman who had given him birth and all the love she could during his last forty-one years, Padre Pio sighed in resignation. “Mama, I promise, I’ll talk to Jesus about Pellegrina and then trust Him to use me to help her.”

The next day, in a comfortably padded stagecoach, Maria Giuseppa left the friary and headed back to Pietrelcina. Faithful to his promise, her stigmatized son pleaded with God to use him to help Pellegrina. By the power of Your Holy Spirit, Lord, You can take me to her in spirit and use me to influence her to return to You.

The following week, Pio’s spiritual “visit” to Pellegrina seemed to convince her that she needed to at least consider reconciling with the Lord, but God let Padre Pio know that it would be many more years before she actually repented. In the meantime, the priest was to pray, fast, and offer up sacrifices for her.

Not until early December of 1928 did Pio again see his beloved mother. By that time, heavy snows had blanketed the friary and church, forcing the friars and devoted volunteers to spend hours shoveling out the entrances. Fierce winds buffeted the ancient buildings, rattling the windows, seeping into every crack in the aged structures, and threatening to knock to the cold, hard ground anyone who dared venture out into the unfriendly weather. In spite of the cruel outside conditions at Our Lady of Grace, Mary Pyle took a stagecoach to Pietrelcina for a short visit with Padre Pio’s parents whom she had come to know and love through her service and devotion to Pio.

While Mary was at the Forgiones’, Padre Pio could not help but recall with joy and longing his birthplace. Lord, what a wonderful place; Your own home in Nazareth must have been just as humble. Pio chuckled, remembering how during the harsh Pietrelcina winters, the Forgiones sometimes would have to bring their donkey inside the house to keep the poor creature warm. You, too, had animals inside Your birthplace, Jesus. Even the moss-covered roof tiles had given the Forgiones’ two-room dwelling a humble, almost-stable-like appearance. Tears threatened to spill from Pio’s eyes as he recalled the sacrifices his parents had continually made for their children. Papa and Mama seldom had ten lire, but we never lacked anything we absolutely needed, especially love.

In spite of the harsh weather at Our Lady of Grace friary and church, on December 5, Mary Pyle brought back with her Maria Giuseppa Forgione to stay as a guest in her rose-colored villa nestled among the snow-covered olive trees. As soon as one of the friars relayed to Pio what Mary had done, he growled his displeasure about her actions, “Che sciocca; what a fool to bring poor Mama all the way up here in this miserable weather!”

Not until his 5 a.m. Mass the next morning did Padre Pio get the chance to see his beloved mother. When she hobbled toward him during Holy Communion to receive Jesus in the Host, her more-stooped-than-usual appearance and her obviously decaying health stunned him. In spite of the sudden tears that threatened to spill from his eyes, he reverently placed the “hidden” Jesus on Maria Giuseppa’s tongue. But before he could stop her, she fell to her knees before him and kissed the ground, as if to reverence the floor upon which her stigmatized son stood.

Mary Pyle who followed close behind Pio’s mother helped the frail woman to stand and to return to their pew after Mary, too, received the Host from Padre Pio’s bleeding hand.

After Mass, when Pio had finished his thanksgiving and hobbled into the corridor, flanked by his bodyguard Padre Vigilio, he searched the group of waiting pilgrims for one specific face. When he spotted it, he pushed his way through the clambering, noisy crowd, with the help of Vigilio, until he reached that one person: Maria Giuseppa. Ignoring even Mary Pyle who stood beside Maria, supporting the frail woman with her sturdy arms, Pio cried, “Mammella!” He took his mother gently into his arms in spite of the pain it caused his wounded hands. Her bony frame seemed more shrunken and frail than it had during her last visit. When he kissed her forehead, its heat startled him. “You must go to bed right away, Mama. You’re sick!”

Her only answer was her sudden coughing spell.

And then Pio knew. She had come here to die.
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