THE LIE
Chapter 4
“Pellegrina?” The name staggered from Padre Pio’s lips, punctuated by his coughing.
“Si, Francesco.”
“Don’t call me that!” he growled. “I am a priest and. . . .”
“And you are my brother, Francesco,” she softly interrupted.
Momentarily disarmed by his sister’s meek response, Pio forced himself to remember how she had twice, during her twenty-six years, broken their mother’s heart and disgraced the entire Forgione family.
Now, his mind flooded with those dark, twisted memories, Padre Pio barely heard Pellegrina’s soft voice pleading, “Francesco, did you hear me?”
The childhood name jerked him back to the present, igniting again his anger and evaporating any possibility of shedding tears. “I told you not to call me that!” He no longer slumped against the partition, but sat up straight, staring at the small dark-screened door as if his vision penetrated it. But he knew it was best he could not see his sister’s familiar face framed by long auburn hair. The sadness he had just heard in her voice threatened to resurrect his tears, and he didn’t need to see that same sadness reflected on her beautiful young face. “I am a. . . .”
“A priest,” she finished for him with a sigh. As if drained of all energy, she added, “But whether as my brother or priest, I need you to listen to me—please.”
What now? he thought, leaning into the partition as if it would emotionally support him when he heard whatever bad news Pellegrina had come to give him. Have mercy on me a sinner, Lord, he begged silently. “Speak,” was all he could mutter to his sister.
“I need to make my confession.”
“Why now? And why to me?”
“Please, Francesco—Padre Pio,” she said, her words stumbling over a sob.
To stop himself from saying something he knew he would regret, Pio covered his bearded mouth with a gloved hand. He knew he shouldn’t tell Pellegrina the truth; that he didn’t want to hear her confession; that as her brother who had never stopped loving her, praying for her, sacrificing for her, even when she had entangled herself in immorality, he didn’t think he could now bear the pain of listening to her sins. Help me—me a sinner, too! Letting his wounded hand fall to his lap, and forcing his voice to sound stern, he said, “Go ahead; confess.”
After sighing deeply, Pellegrina began in her familiar gentle voice, “Bless me, Padre, for I have sinned. As best as I can figure, it’s been about ten years since my last confession. Since then I. . . .”
Feeling as if Pellegrina’s confession was puncturing his heart, Pio listened as she revealed much of what he already knew: her two pregnancies with two different men. Though in 1913 she did marry the first one, Antonino Masone, he had soon abandoned her and their baby Maria Giuseppa, leaving Pellegrina to work as a seamstress to support little Maria and herself.
“Then about two years ago I met a soldier who was on leave,” Pellegrina was now saying. “He—Julius—was lonely and I was lonely and we . . . .”
“Loneliness is no excuse for your shameful behavior,” Pio said, straining with the effort to keep his voice calm.
“Have you never been lonely, Francesco—Padre?” she demanded in an uncharacteristic harsh tone.
“Of course, but God is always present, no matter where we are, as are Mary and our guardian angels, so we are never alone.”
“And where were they, where was God when. . . .” A sob momentarily choked her, but the anger Pio heard in her voice enabled her to continue. “Where was He, Francesco, when my sweet little Maria died in March of last year? When she got sick in February and I asked God to heal her, He just ignored me, ignored my beautiful Maria.”
The anger in Pellegrina’s voice seemed to aggravate the wounds in Pio’s hands, feet, and side, causing them to throb. But it was the pain he also heard in her voice which now made him wish that no partition separated priest and penitent. He wanted to take this younger sister of his into his arms and comfort her as he had done so many times when they were growing up together in their family’s one-story, two-room stone house in Pietrelcina. But instead, he swallowed hard, attempting to ease the emotional tightness of his throat, and said, “God has his reasons, Pellegrina, and they are always for our best.” He knew before she replied that she wouldn’t agree with him.
“And was it for the ‘best’ that Antonino deserted Maria and me?” she asked.
The bitterness in Pellegrina’s voice had pierced her brother’s heart which already ached for her with an almost-unbearable pain. He had no answer for her, so he merely said, “Continue now with your confession and try to avoid rationalizing your—your mistakes.”
Pio heard his sister take a deep breath before she continued. “When little Alfredo was born last July, I thought God had finally listened to me and replaced my sorrow with the joy of a new baby. But lately I’ve been worried He’ll take my sweet Alfredo from me too.” A sob punctuated the end of her sentence.
Longing to tell his sister he understood the loneliness that seemed to have driven her into her latest sinful relationship, Pio reminded himself he was a priest and should ignore the fact that he was also Pellegrina’s brother, inseparably connected to her by their shared history and love. “Stop complaining about God as if you could ever second-guess Him, and start thinking about the state of your soul.” With renewed determination he demanded, “Stop living in sin, Pellegrina!”
“You mean marry my son’s father Julius? You know I can’t do that; no one knows if my husband Antonino is dead or alive!”
His head aching from the almost-superhuman effort it was taking to not give up on his sister and her seemingly hopeless situation, Pio said, “I know all that. What you need to do is to admit you are living in sin. Then you must promise me you’ll take Alfredo and go live with Mamma and Papa in Pietrelcina until you find yourself a good job and a small cottage. There you can, by yourself, raise your son in peace, knowing you’re no longer living a way of life that separates you from God—possibly for eternity.”
When Pellegrina replied in a trembling voice, Pio could imagine the tears coursing down her beautiful young face. “I can’t leave Julius; my son needs his father.” Choking on a sob she added in a hoarse whisper, “I need Julius.”
“What you need, Pellegrina, is to tell God you’re sorry for your sins and that you’ll change your ways, and then I can give you absolution. Then. . . .”
“Stop it, Francesco!” She drew in a deep breath and then exhaled as if releasing all her frustration and anger along with any desire to continue her confession. “It was wrong of me to come here.”
“No, it . . . .”
She cut him off with, “I should have known you wouldn’t understand.” Her next words ripped at his heart and soul. “I should have known you’d only look at my situation with the eyes of a priest and not with the heart of my brother, the brother I used to know.” Sniffling she added, “Goodbye—Padre Pio.”
Suppressing a groan, Pio knew he had to do one of the hardest things he had ever done in his entire thirty-one years: let her go. Listening to Pellegrina leaving the confessional, he finally allowed his suppressed tears to silently escape, and he thanked God she had been his last penitent for the day. With a heavy gloom threatening to overpower him, he knew he couldn’t bear anymore of the world’s problems; at least not today.
Pio listened to his sister’s light footsteps as she headed—he assumed—toward the church exit. But seconds later when he heard those same footsteps approaching the confessional, he held his breath. And when Pellegrina suddenly opened his door and stared down at him, the dread on her beloved face and the hopelessness in those familiar dark eyes made him forget the pain in his own heart and body. He rose to embrace her, letting his tears fall unashamedly onto her sweet-smelling hair as she rested in his arms, just like she had done so many times as a child when she would come to him for help and comfort.
“Forgive me for not telling you about her right away, Francesco,” Pellegrina whispered, “but I just couldn’t.” She gently pulled away from him and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Tell me what—about who?” From the look on her face he knew Pellegrina had more bad news, and he silently begged God to fortify him for what she might say next.
“Felicita—our dear sister.” A sob choked Pellegrina.
“What about her?” Pio demanded, grabbing his sister’s shoulders as if to shake the answer from her.
“She—she died.”
Too stunned to speak, Pio just stared at Pellegrina, hoping—for once—that she had lied. But her beautiful face, creased and stained by mourning, assured him she had told the truth. As a new agony gripped his heart, Pio sank onto the nearest pew, certain his wounded feet couldn’t bear his 160 pounds which suddenly seemed more like 360. Resting his head on the back of the pew in front of him, he sobbed, remembering his twenty-nine-year-old sister Felicita: saintly young mother of three. He’d never seen her angry, no matter what troubles intruded into her life—and she’d had so many. Too many for one so young, so good, so simple.
Pio’s sobs muffled Pellegrina’s words so that he barely heard her continue, “I wanted to tell you sooner, Francesco, but Felicita made the whole family promise not to mention to you her approaching death until after I told you, and she made me promise not to tell you until after her funeral. She didn’t want you to think you had to travel all the way to Pietrelcina to be with her in her dying and then at the funeral. She knew your lungs had always given you trouble, and now. . . .” Pellegrina stared at the brown fingerless gloves covering her brother’s hands that he held clasped in front of his lowered head. “And now you have the stigmata. Felicita said your five wounds must hurt you constantly, and she didn’t want you to feel you had to come all that way. But, Francesco, what really held me back was that she’d made me promise to make a good confession to you while I was here and to promise you I would leave Julius. I knew I wasn’t ready to make any promises to you, but finally I came anyway, and now—now I’ve ruined everything.”
When Pio heard the raw emotion cracking his sister’s voice, empathy welled up in his heart. The priest and brother raised his head and smiled tenderly at her through his tears. “Va bene, it’s okay; you didn’t ruin anything,” he said, reaching out to gently grasp her hand. “Per favore, please, tell me about our Felicita.”
Alone with her brother in the small ancient church, her own tears coursing down her face, Pellegrina shared family details with Pio as the late-afternoon sun prepared to disappear behind the Gargano mountains. Wanting to absorb his sister’s every word about the entire Forgione family he loved and missed so much, Pio restrained the sobs that threatened to erupt from him as Pellegrina vividly described how the Spanish influenza had already ravaged his hometown of Pietrelcina. No one knew if the pandemic had affected Papa and Michele still working in America, but Pellegrina assured Pio that Mamma, still living in his childhood home, had suffered only a mild case of the flu. Felicita and her family, however, had been hit hard. Her husband Vincenzo Masone, like Mamma, had experienced only a mild case, but the flu had brought Felicita’s six-year-old daughter Giuseppina and two-year-old son Ettoruccio near death before they began to slowly recover.
Pellegrina now paused before continuing, as if unsure she should tell her brother the rest. He watched her squeeze shut her eyes as she inhaled deeply, as if for courage. Then he listened in horror as she related to him how, at the end of last month, Felicita’s four-year-old son Pellegrino had one morning staggered up to Vincenzo and complained about a headache. Within a few hours the boy had collapsed and died.
“Dear God, no!” Pio now cried. Moaning and shaking his head in disbelief he said, “Not sweet Pellegrino.” He stared at his sister’s grief-stricken face as if willing her to tell him it was all a lie, but he knew she had spoken the terrible truth. Choking back his sobs, he asked, “How did Felicita handle it?”
Taking another deep, quivering breath, obviously struggling with her own grief, Pellegrina related how Felicita hadn’t known what had happened to Pellegrino because she was lying in bed near death herself with not only the influenza but also with complications from the miscarriage she had suffered only days before that. Though Felicita had kept pleading with Vincenzo to tell her how little Pellegrino was doing, he lied, telling her the boy was just outside playing with friends. After three days of her husband’s deception and never seeing her beloved son, Felicita sat up in bed and screamed at Vincenzo, “Why did you lie to me? My son is dead!”
“How did she know?” Padre Pio now asked Pellegrina, his voice reduced to an agonized whisper.
Fresh tears glistened in Pellegrina’s dark eyes as she told her brother how Felicita had, after suddenly sitting up in her sickbed, stared at some unknown point beyond her husband and insisted that Vincenzo look behind him because there was little Pellegrino soaring toward them with God’s holy angels.
Pio raised his head, smiled tenderly at his sister through his tears, and said, “Per piacere, please continue about Felicita.”
Sniffling, Pelegrina continued to relate how, during the apparition, Felicita had assured her bewildered husband that little Pellegrino and the holy angels had all come to take her to Heaven. Only a half-hour later, Felicita had breathed one last time and joined her son in Paradise.
By the time Pellegrina had related that last event, grief had almost paralyzed Pio. Too numb to even cry, he said to her in a low weary voice, “Return home, nenne, little one; tell Mamma and Vincenzo that I send my love and will keep them in constant prayer, but that my own health and the five wounds prevent me from coming to them in their sorrow. Tell Mamma. . . .” He stalled on a sob that threatened to escape his throat as the image of his saintly mother arose in his mind. Pio could almost see Maria Giuseppa de Nunzio Forgione’s intense light-blue eyes, her dark brown hair always neatly tucked behind her neck, the beautiful features of her face, always wrinkled by the constant fatigue and worry due to raising a family and helping her dark-skinned, ruggedly handsome Orazio Forgione coax vegetables and fruit from the unforgiving, rocky soil of their small field.
Now, struggling not to cry, Pio said to Pellegrina, “Tell Mamma not to worry about me; I’ll write soon.”
“But I don’t want to leave you like this, Francesco,” said Pellegrina, using her handkerchief to blot the tears clinging to his beard.
“No. Fortza, go; I’ll be fine.” He forced a weak smile at the beautiful face now puckered with concern for him. “But promise me you’ll come again—soon.” And in the meantime, leave that scoundrel Julius so you can make a good confession and save your soul, he added silently.
“Si, I will come again.”
Two weeks later, on a raw October morning, just when Pio had reconciled himself to accepting God’s will in regard to the suffering and deaths that had stricken his beloved family in Pietrelcina, he received a letter from Pellegrina.
______________________________________________________________
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Chapter 3 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Pade Pio
ACCUSED
Chapter 3
Dr. De Nittis gave the two priests no further opportunity to argue. “Come with me, and I’ll teach you how to do it,” he said, opening the infirmary door and ushering them inside.
Too bad I have to breathe when I’m in here, Pio thought. This time he avoided another coughing spell by not inhaling too deeply of the biting odors of carbolic acid and vomit. Well, at least if my wounds give off any scent of flowers, no one will notice!
Once De Nittis had demonstrated to the two priests how to fill a syringe, disinfect the injection site with carbolic acid, and then inject the medication into the buttock of one of the boys, he unceremoniously declared, “Padre Paolino, Padre Pio, you are ready.” A weary sigh punctuated his words as he added, “Just don’t forget to use the carbolic acid before you give the injection.” A weak smile lifted his pale, thin lips as he said, “Molte grazie. You two could be saving lives here.” The doctor grabbed his medical bag. “Now I’ve got to trust my horse and buggy to get me safely to every cottage between here and San Giovanni to check on patients and see if there are any new cases of influenza since yesterday.”
As the doctor, black bag in one gnarled hand, breezed out the infirmary door, Pio had to smile at the tall, rawboned retreating figure. His horse is almost as ancient as he is; please keep them both safe, Lord. Taking a deep breath of the caustic vapors permeating the infirmary, Pio coughed and added, And please help Padre and me as we inject these poor boys. St. Paul’s words to the Philippians now emerged from Pio’s memory and reminded him: “I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” That means ‘everything,’ he silently restated, even giving injections. For added reassurance, Pio patted the area above his heart where he kept a tiny rosary in the pocket of his habit so that whenever he needed to say the ancient sequence of prayers for someone, he didn’t have to use the larger rosary that hung from the cord encircling his waist. He could keep the smaller, less-conspicuous set of beads hidden within the palm of his hand so that no one knew he was praying. Now pressing his fingers against the hidden rosary, he lifted up a quick and silent Hail Mary.
While Paolino injected students at the far end of the infirmary, Pio began at the end nearest the door. Worse for him than the intense and inescapable odors of the infirmary was the thought of having to puncture the flesh of each student in order to administer the medication. Help me, Guardian Angel, he silently pleaded, taking a deep, pungent breath for courage. After swabbing a spot on the first student’s posterior with the carbolic acid, Pio gritted his teeth and carefully injected the medication into the young patient’s flesh. Each time he inoculated a boy, the patient flinched and moaned, which never failed to bring tears to Pio’s eyes. He empathized so much with his students, he barely noticed the pain of his stigmata and the stinging areas on both of his hands where carbolic acid splattered each time he sprinkled some onto the cloth he used to swab each boy’s injection site.
It wasn’t until almost an hour later when Paolino and Pio had finally finished injecting all the boys that the stinging areas on Pio’s hands, where the carbolic acid had spilled, began to hurt like bee bites. He decided not to treat those burns while in the presence of Paolino so that the superior wouldn’t spy the stigmata. Pio was confident that no one had seen them yet, because although the sleeves of his habit had slid backward every time he had filled the syringe to inject each boy, he knew the young patients were too sick and too focused on their own suffering to have noticed the stigmata. And Paolino had been too intent on injecting the boys on the far side of the infirmary to notice Pio’s occasionally exposed hands.
On their way out the door of the infirmary, Padre Paolino glanced at Pio through wire-rimmed glasses and said, “I got carbolic acid on my fingers, and it burns, so I dabbed ointment on each spot. Did you get burned too?”
“Just a few minor spots on my hands, so I didn’t bother putting anything on them,” Pio replied and immediately switched the focus to a safer topic: the young patients. “Do you think the acid we swabbed on the boys is having the same burning effect on their bottoms?”
“I hope not. They won’t be able to sit down for a few days if it did!” Paolino’s chuckling jiggled his dark, six-inch beard.
Too worried to find humor in the situation, Pio wondered aloud, “Maybe we should’ve diluted the carbolic acid before using it.”
“Dr. De Nittis never said anything about diluting it,” replied Paolino, his wide grin fading as he and Pio ambled down the narrow, dimly lit corridor that connected the friary and church.
So he wouldn’t draw the superior’s attention to the pain in his feet, Pio struggled not to limp as he strode beside him. “No, the doctor didn’t say anything about it, but maybe he was too exhausted and worried to remember to mention it.” What if Paolino and I—in our efforts to help them—actually created more pain for those poor boys? Pio knew he had to return to the infirmary, in spite of its stench. “Go on to your other duties, Padre Paolino, and I’ll give each boy a bit of ointment to rub on his buttock to soothe any burning.”
“Good.” Paolino peered at the now-evident burn marks on Pio’s fingers and the inch of his hands not hidden by his sleeves. “As your superior, I order you to put some medicine on your burns too.” Aiming a weary grin and sigh at Pio, Paolino added, “See you in the dining room this evening.” Continuing toward the main part of the friary, the superior chuckled as he added over his shoulder, “And hopefully Fra Nicola won’t serve us more of that tough wild broccoli he only half-cooked last night.”
Echoing his superior’s chuckle, Pio turned and retraced his steps to the infirmary where he did as he had planned for each patient and also used some of the ointment to soothe the gnawing of the burns on his own hands. He carefully avoided touching the stigmata; he knew from experience that the slightest pressure would cause his hands to throb with pain for at least an hour.
Before Pio left, in trudged Rosina Barbati, one of the village women who often confessed to him and who, in honor of her son who had recently died in the war, had volunteered to help care for Pio’s students. The Padre now explained to her what had been done for the boys. “God bless you, Rosina,” he added, “for all you’re doing for them.”
“Grazie, Padre.” After grabbing Pio’s hand and placing the customary kiss on it, instead of letting go, Rosina tightened her grasp on his aching hand and stared it. “Padre, what happened?”
Pio panicked as he saw that his sleeve had pulled up to reveal the stigmata. He jerked out of her grasp, pulled the sleeve back over his hand, and grumbled, “Niente! Nothing!” Immediately regretting his gruffness, he forced a smile. “Just stupidity on my part,” he assured her. “Splashed some undiluted carbolic acid on my hands, but the burns are nothing to worry about.”
“But. . . .”
He interrupted her with, “God bless you, my daughter,” and retreated as fast as his wounded feet could carry him out the door.
Monday September 23, 1918:
After celebrating 5 a.m. Mass the next morning and placing the ciborium and chalice in the sacristy, Padre Pio extinguished the fire in the small stove that had effectively taken the chill out of the room. Next he returned to the altar to carefully extinguish the two-foot-high tapered candles that flanked it. Before Padre Pio climbed the steps of the choir loft to say his thanksgiving, he hobbled on tired, aching feet toward the sacristy to purify the sacred vessels he had used. Almost to the doorway, he began carefully rolling up his long sleeves in preparation for the cleansing, when the all-too-familiar voice of Nina Campanile blurted from yards behind him and interrupted the Hail Mary he had silently begun only seconds earlier. Frowning, he turned toward her wondering, Does she have more bad news about her sister? No; he mustn’t think like that! Hadn’t he celebrated Mass for Vittoria’s quick recovery from the influenza and then said three rosaries every day since then for her and her unborn child? He had to trust the Lord. Nevertheless, seconds later when Nina stood before him, her dark eyes gleaming with unshed tears, he anxiously asked, “Your sister; how is she?”
Along with her tears, Nina’s words spilled out in a stream of gratitude. “It’s a miracle! Your prayers worked a miracle, Padre. Molte grazie. Mamma sends her thanks, too, as does Vittoria who can already get out of bed and help us knead the bread dough, just as you predicted.”
“And the baby?”
Tears made Nina’s flushed cheeks glisten as she smiled and said, “Last night Vittoria felt it move inside her!”
Grinning, Pio gave a quick bow toward Christ’s real presence in the tabernacle on the altar and breathed, “Thank You, Jesus.” He turned back toward Nina. “Go home, my daughter, and help your mamma and sister prepare for the arrival of the baby.” With a chuckle he added, “It won’t be long before you’ll be known as Zia Nina, Aunt Nina.”
But as if she hadn’t even heard him, Nina exclaimed, “Padre!”
Startled by the loud cry, he realized her eyes had focused on his hands. How stupid of me! Quickly he unrolled the sleeves of his habit and drew them back over his wounds. “Forza, go—now!” Immediately regretting his harshness, he added in a gentler tone and with a half-smile, “Forgive me, but I’m tired and need to make my thanksgiving, so it would be best if you leave this grumpy priest alone.”
Seemingly undaunted, Nina continued, “But the dark wounds in the center of your hands are still bleeding and don’t look any better than they did Saturday. Something needs to be done about them.”
“I told you not to worry.” Humiliation burned his cheeks. “These are just burns from carbolic acid I spilled on myself when I was preparing to inoculate my students. I’m sure my burns will clear up in a few days.”
“They don’t look anything like the acid burns.” When she suddenly reached out with both hands and pressed down on the material that covered the stigmata, Pio moaned. Tears of pain rolled down his cheeks, and for a moment he thought he might faint.
Nina gasped. “Mi dispiace, I’m so sorry,” she said, her eyes mirroring his pain. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Padre.” Apparently noticing his now-pale face she begged, “Please come sit on a pew until. . . .”
“No, don’t worry, it’s okay,” Pio managed between gritted teeth as the throbbing in his hands began to subside enough to allow the dizziness to wane.
“But I can ask Mamma if she has something to ease the pain for you, Padre. I. . . .”
Pio glared at her. “Nina!” he said as if speaking to an uncooperative child. “Like I told you Saturday, the wounds are minor, nothing to worry about.” In a softer tone, he continued, “Go home, daughter, where your mamma and sister need you.” Pio gave Nina a fatherly pat on her shawl-covered shoulder. “I’ll be fine.” He nodded toward the church door. “Go.”
“Si, Padre, yes.” But Nina sounded unconvinced. Before turning to leave, she peered again at his hands, hidden beneath the long sleeves of his habit. Her hard gaze seemed to penetrate the heavy brown fabric. When she glanced up at him again he saw the unmistakable glint of suspicion—and something else. But what?
The answer hit Pio like a boulder tumbling out of a peasant’s mule cart. She knows! Dear Lord, somehow she knows. Pio knew he had to convince her to not tell anyone, but how should he say it? It could be she doesn’t know, and if that’s the case, saying something would just make her more suspicious and then she really would know the truth. Sighing, he decided to leave it in the Lord’s hands.
Pio watched Nina’s tall, slender form march down the aisle in the central nave. As she passed the side altars dedicated to Immaculate Mary and St. Francis of Assisi, Pio silently pleaded with them to keep Nina silent about the stigmata—if she really did suspect the truth.
As the young kerchiefed Nina passed beneath the low vault, above which perched the choir loft, and before she had a chance to open the heavy wooden door to the outside, Padre Paolino’s hefty frame pushed it open. He almost bumped into her as he strode into the church. Less than a minute later, though Pio could see the priest’s and Nina’s lips moving in conversation, he couldn’t hear what they were saying. But within seconds he knew something was wrong because Nina’s excited gestures in Pio’s direction revealed the essence of the conversation: She had seen the wounds and suspected their supernatural origin.
A few minutes later when Paolino opened the church door for Nina and ushered her outside with a sweep of his arm, Pio breathed a sigh of relief. I must be wrong. Neither of them suspects the truth; otherwise why would both of them be leaving? But before the door swung shut, Paolino waltzed back into the church and lumbered down the aisle toward Pio who still stood in front of the first pew.
Out of breath, Paolino halted before Pio and noisily sucked in huge gulps of air. After straightening his glasses, Paolino finally focused on him, and Pio cringed at the anger leaping from his superior’s dark eyes. “Is it true?” Paolino demanded. “Because if it is, why didn’t you tell me first? I’m your superior, for heavens sake! Tell me now or. . . .”
“Padre Paolino, come quickly!” yelled a voice from the front of the church. Both priests turned toward the voice, and Pio recognized Fra Nicola’s spindly frame and shaggy ten-inch beard silhouetted by the early morning light drifting through the open front door.
In response to Nicola’s frantic arm motions and voice, Paolino excused himself from Pio with a glower and a curt, “I’ll see you later!” Was it a promise or a threat—or both?
Moments later, finally alone in the silence of Our Lady of Grace friary church, Padre Pio shuffled up the steep steps to the choir loft where he savored the solitude and allowed it, and his after-Mass thanksgiving, to massage his taut nerves and ease his worries.
About 11 a.m., plodding on swollen feet, Pio finally headed down the narrow, dimly lit corridor that connected the church to the friary. When he reached the door to his cell, he stopped to glance up at the inscription someone from centuries past had carved into the top of the wide wooden doorframe: “The cross is always ready and awaits you wherever.” Opening his lock-less door, Pio smiled wryly as he mulled over the truth of that single sentence. Today my cross appeared in the form of Nina and Paolino. Pio hobbled into the small room and closed the door behind him. Out of habit, he turned to gaze lovingly at the crucifix which hung on the yellowed wall above the head of his narrow bed. “But I did ask You, Jesus, to accept me as a victim, unworthy though I am. A victim, Lord, who would share in your sufferings all the days of my life. A victim for the end of the pandemic and the war, and for the salvation of all.”
With a sigh, Pio sank onto the edge of the bed, still gazing at the sacred corpus hanging on the crucifix. “And You, in your great mercy, Jesus, gave me the stigmata, a gift I certainly don’t deserve. I still long to suffer for—and with—You, and I accept all the physical pain the stigmata might cause me, but I don’t know how I can bear the humiliation of having people actually see the wounds. I want to suffer secretly, Lord, so that only You know what is happening to me.” A lone tear dribbled down Pio’s cheek as he pleaded, “I won’t stop asking You to remove, in your mercy, not the wounds or the pain—because I want You to inebriate me with pain—but the visible signs of the stigmata which have already caused me such painful embarrassment.”
Though only silence answered Pio’s plea, as always he spiritually abandoned himself into God’s embrace.
How long he remained staring at the crucifix and contemplating Christ’s wounds, he didn’t know, but heavy footsteps and a deep familiar voice broke Pio’s contemplation. Reluctantly he turned toward the doorway through which the ample frame of his superior now strode, making Pio’s small cell suddenly seem claustrophobic.
When Pio started to rise out of respect, Padre Paolino just glared at him through glasses perched on a long, thin nose. “Don’t get up. Stay right there and tell me everything.” He pulled out the one wooden chair from the small table where Pio often wrote letters. Sinking onto the seat and leaning toward him, Paolino repeated, “Tell me everything—now!”
When Pio remained silent, too stunned to speak, Paolino growled, “If you don’t have the decency to tell me your secrets—me, your spiritual director—then at least let me see your hands!” Pio obediently held out his now-trembling hands. Paolino clumsily pushed up his sleeves, exposing the wounds, and Pio gasped at the sudden intense pain caused by the movement of the material. At his cry, the superior glanced up at him.
Fighting back tears, Pio gritted his teeth and scanned his superior’s face, hoping to find at least a glimmer of mercy. What he found was recognition of the agony Pio was experiencing because of Paolino’s rough, impatient actions. And now as the superior’s tone of voice and facial expression melted into those of tender concern, Pio’s heart hungrily absorbed the merciful words uttered in a ragged whisper, “Forgive me, my son.” The tears glistening in the superior’s eyes reflected those threatening to spill from Pio’s. Paolino once again let his gaze fall on the stigmata, now oozing more blood than usual due to the harsh way he had pushed back the sleeves. “Forgive me,” he repeated reverently. As if thinking out loud, he whispered, eyes still fixed on the wounds, “The stigmata; just like our spiritual father St. Francis of Assisi.” Inhaling deeply of the aroma emanating from the wounds, he added, “And the Odor of Sanctity, like so many of the saints in Church history. Dominic, Anthony of Padua, Teresa, to name a few.”
Certain he would break down and sob if he spoke, Pio remained silent, deeply moved by his superior’s sudden change in attitude.
But as quickly as that attitude had reversed, it flipped back again when Paolino sneered at Pio. “You received the stigmata, and yet I had to find out about it from Nina Campanile? She told me today she had suspected the truth three days ago when she saw you. Why didn’t you come to me then?”
How can I make him understand? Pio’s heart ached for the Padre. I need to say something to ease the pain I caused him. Pio decided he’d just have to trust the Lord for the right words. “Mi scusi, please forgive me, Padre Paolino, but ever since Friday morning when I received the wounds I’ve begged Jesus to take away their outward signs. I. . . .” Exhaustion from the emotional as well as physical pains of the morning’s encounters with Paolino and Nina finally caught up with Pio, cutting short his explanation. Staring down at his exposed hands, he barely noticed the warmth of his tears falling on them. Give me strength, Lord. Pray for me, Mary.
Taking a deep breath, Pio raised his head. In spite of his accuser’s scowl which seemed now to blaze with anger, Pio said, “I begged the Lord to take away the signs of the stigmata, but not the pain. If Jesus had taken away the outward signs, there would’ve been no need to tell you anything. That was my hope.” Trying to read his superior’s enigmatic expression, he added, “Forgive me, Padre, please.”
As if embarrassed, Paolino cleared his throat and stood. “Forgive?” He blinked his eyes, and a tear rolled from each. “Of course, my son.” Turning toward the door, he took one step forward, stopped, and turned again toward Pio. “But I must write immediately to the provincial Padre Benedetto about this matter, otherwise I, too, will need to ask forgiveness.” Before turning again to leave, Paolino sternly ordered, “Don’t mention the stigmata to anyone; do you hear?”
“Si, Padre. But what about Nina Campanile? She. . . .”
“Don’t worry; I’ll order her not to tell anyone.” With that, Paolino marched out of Pio’s cell.
But by the first week of October, it was obvious to Padre Pio that his superior’s demand for silence from Nina Campanile had failed. The same day she saw my wounds she must’ve started telling people about them, Pio grumbled silently, because now it seems as if everyone in southern Italy knows. Even his family in Pietrelcina knew, because his brother Michele’s wife Giuseppa had, only two days ago, traveled to the friary in a mule cart over the eighty-some rocky mountainous miles, with their nine-year-old son Francesco, to verify the facts. At this rate, Pio now thought, Papa and Michele working in America will soon know.
And on this unusually hot afternoon, the first Saturday in October, the long line outside Padre Pio’s confessional testified to the fact that the news of his stigmata had found no obstacle in passing from peasant to peasant and cottage to cottage; from the village of San Giovanni Rotondo to God-only-knew-how-far beyond that. Now in the stuffy dimness of the cramped confessional, the young priest, exhausted from hearing confessions for the past three hours, slumped against the thin wall that separated him from the penitent waiting on the other side. He knew she was female, because as soon as he slid open the small eye-level door and revealed the screen that hid her face, the heavy scent of her perfume immediately ambushed his senses.
“Bless me, Padre, for I have sinned. It’s. . . .” As the woman began her confession, Pio felt his lungs begin to congest from the oppressive heat and the now-nauseating scent of perfume. With one of his gloved hands, he stifled a cough that threatened to erupt. Even that slight movement caused the brown fingerless glove to pull at the scab that had begun to form over the bleeding wound in his palm. Wincing, he heard the woman continue, “Since my last confession I lied four times to. . . .”
The woman’s heavy scent forced Pio’s lungs to spasm, and his wracking coughs interrupted her. When he could again breathe normally, he cleared his throat, apologized, and encouraged her to continue her confession. “Si, yes, Padre,” she said.
Minutes after absolving and blessing her, Pio listened to her leave and to the next penitent take her place. He opened his door to allow the lingering perfume to dissipate. After taking a deep, cleansing breath of the somewhat-clearer air of the church, he glanced at the line of penitents still waiting. Maybe twenty more. Silencing a groan, Pio shook his head. God must think I need to do an awful lot of penance to have sent me so many penitents eager to confess on such a hot day. Pio peered into the dim light that shadowed the people toward the end of the line, making them look like gray, faceless, genderless mannequins. Give me grace to be patient. Sighing, he added, Speak to each of them through me, Lord.
Closing the confessional door once more, he heard his empty stomach grumble. He thought back to this morning’s breakfast in the friary dining room and how he had eaten only one slice of the homemade bread Fra Nicola had accepted yesterday during his begging rounds. This morning Pio had also managed to avoid taking any of the steaming eggs Nicola had offered Paolino and himself. No wonder I’ve sometimes felt light-headed today, Pio now thought. Even though he knew his constant fasting bordered on obsessive and would eventually draw the disapproval of his superior, Pio wanted to spiritually strengthen his soul to withstand the evil that seemed to continually worm its way into his life. Why do I know the state of each penitent’s soul and yet can’t discern my own? I must be the world’s worst sinner; why else would God hide from me? But he pushed those tormenting thoughts aside as the next penitent knelt to confess.
For the next hour, Padre Pio spent his spiritual strength hearing the confessions of the remaining penitents. At least that last penitent I heard let me know I only have one more to go, he thought, sighing with relief. But at the same time he was ashamed for feeling exhausted, impatient, and almost desperate to escape the near-claustrophobic confines of the confessional. Now, as he leaned once more against the thin wall, Pio closed his eyes and sighed.
“Francesco?” the female penitent hesitantly began.
That voice. Pio opened his eyes, sat up straight, and stared at the small, dark-screened door that hid her face. That voice! Immediately he knew it belonged to his younger sister Pellegrina who had broken their mother’s heart by getting pregnant out of wedlock, not just once, but twice, to two different men. Thank God, Pellegrina kept the babies! Though Pio thought she was outwardly the most beautiful of his three sisters, he knew that inwardly Pellegrina’s soul was shrouded by the sinful ways she refused to forsake. So what’s she doing in the confessional—my confessional—now? Why would she travel to the friary for confession when she lived in Pietrelcina more than eighteen hours away by mule cart over rocky dirt roads? Too many questions now flooded Padre Pio’s mind and heart, triggering another coughing spasm.
______________________________________________________________
Chapter 3
Dr. De Nittis gave the two priests no further opportunity to argue. “Come with me, and I’ll teach you how to do it,” he said, opening the infirmary door and ushering them inside.
Too bad I have to breathe when I’m in here, Pio thought. This time he avoided another coughing spell by not inhaling too deeply of the biting odors of carbolic acid and vomit. Well, at least if my wounds give off any scent of flowers, no one will notice!
Once De Nittis had demonstrated to the two priests how to fill a syringe, disinfect the injection site with carbolic acid, and then inject the medication into the buttock of one of the boys, he unceremoniously declared, “Padre Paolino, Padre Pio, you are ready.” A weary sigh punctuated his words as he added, “Just don’t forget to use the carbolic acid before you give the injection.” A weak smile lifted his pale, thin lips as he said, “Molte grazie. You two could be saving lives here.” The doctor grabbed his medical bag. “Now I’ve got to trust my horse and buggy to get me safely to every cottage between here and San Giovanni to check on patients and see if there are any new cases of influenza since yesterday.”
As the doctor, black bag in one gnarled hand, breezed out the infirmary door, Pio had to smile at the tall, rawboned retreating figure. His horse is almost as ancient as he is; please keep them both safe, Lord. Taking a deep breath of the caustic vapors permeating the infirmary, Pio coughed and added, And please help Padre and me as we inject these poor boys. St. Paul’s words to the Philippians now emerged from Pio’s memory and reminded him: “I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” That means ‘everything,’ he silently restated, even giving injections. For added reassurance, Pio patted the area above his heart where he kept a tiny rosary in the pocket of his habit so that whenever he needed to say the ancient sequence of prayers for someone, he didn’t have to use the larger rosary that hung from the cord encircling his waist. He could keep the smaller, less-conspicuous set of beads hidden within the palm of his hand so that no one knew he was praying. Now pressing his fingers against the hidden rosary, he lifted up a quick and silent Hail Mary.
While Paolino injected students at the far end of the infirmary, Pio began at the end nearest the door. Worse for him than the intense and inescapable odors of the infirmary was the thought of having to puncture the flesh of each student in order to administer the medication. Help me, Guardian Angel, he silently pleaded, taking a deep, pungent breath for courage. After swabbing a spot on the first student’s posterior with the carbolic acid, Pio gritted his teeth and carefully injected the medication into the young patient’s flesh. Each time he inoculated a boy, the patient flinched and moaned, which never failed to bring tears to Pio’s eyes. He empathized so much with his students, he barely noticed the pain of his stigmata and the stinging areas on both of his hands where carbolic acid splattered each time he sprinkled some onto the cloth he used to swab each boy’s injection site.
It wasn’t until almost an hour later when Paolino and Pio had finally finished injecting all the boys that the stinging areas on Pio’s hands, where the carbolic acid had spilled, began to hurt like bee bites. He decided not to treat those burns while in the presence of Paolino so that the superior wouldn’t spy the stigmata. Pio was confident that no one had seen them yet, because although the sleeves of his habit had slid backward every time he had filled the syringe to inject each boy, he knew the young patients were too sick and too focused on their own suffering to have noticed the stigmata. And Paolino had been too intent on injecting the boys on the far side of the infirmary to notice Pio’s occasionally exposed hands.
On their way out the door of the infirmary, Padre Paolino glanced at Pio through wire-rimmed glasses and said, “I got carbolic acid on my fingers, and it burns, so I dabbed ointment on each spot. Did you get burned too?”
“Just a few minor spots on my hands, so I didn’t bother putting anything on them,” Pio replied and immediately switched the focus to a safer topic: the young patients. “Do you think the acid we swabbed on the boys is having the same burning effect on their bottoms?”
“I hope not. They won’t be able to sit down for a few days if it did!” Paolino’s chuckling jiggled his dark, six-inch beard.
Too worried to find humor in the situation, Pio wondered aloud, “Maybe we should’ve diluted the carbolic acid before using it.”
“Dr. De Nittis never said anything about diluting it,” replied Paolino, his wide grin fading as he and Pio ambled down the narrow, dimly lit corridor that connected the friary and church.
So he wouldn’t draw the superior’s attention to the pain in his feet, Pio struggled not to limp as he strode beside him. “No, the doctor didn’t say anything about it, but maybe he was too exhausted and worried to remember to mention it.” What if Paolino and I—in our efforts to help them—actually created more pain for those poor boys? Pio knew he had to return to the infirmary, in spite of its stench. “Go on to your other duties, Padre Paolino, and I’ll give each boy a bit of ointment to rub on his buttock to soothe any burning.”
“Good.” Paolino peered at the now-evident burn marks on Pio’s fingers and the inch of his hands not hidden by his sleeves. “As your superior, I order you to put some medicine on your burns too.” Aiming a weary grin and sigh at Pio, Paolino added, “See you in the dining room this evening.” Continuing toward the main part of the friary, the superior chuckled as he added over his shoulder, “And hopefully Fra Nicola won’t serve us more of that tough wild broccoli he only half-cooked last night.”
Echoing his superior’s chuckle, Pio turned and retraced his steps to the infirmary where he did as he had planned for each patient and also used some of the ointment to soothe the gnawing of the burns on his own hands. He carefully avoided touching the stigmata; he knew from experience that the slightest pressure would cause his hands to throb with pain for at least an hour.
Before Pio left, in trudged Rosina Barbati, one of the village women who often confessed to him and who, in honor of her son who had recently died in the war, had volunteered to help care for Pio’s students. The Padre now explained to her what had been done for the boys. “God bless you, Rosina,” he added, “for all you’re doing for them.”
“Grazie, Padre.” After grabbing Pio’s hand and placing the customary kiss on it, instead of letting go, Rosina tightened her grasp on his aching hand and stared it. “Padre, what happened?”
Pio panicked as he saw that his sleeve had pulled up to reveal the stigmata. He jerked out of her grasp, pulled the sleeve back over his hand, and grumbled, “Niente! Nothing!” Immediately regretting his gruffness, he forced a smile. “Just stupidity on my part,” he assured her. “Splashed some undiluted carbolic acid on my hands, but the burns are nothing to worry about.”
“But. . . .”
He interrupted her with, “God bless you, my daughter,” and retreated as fast as his wounded feet could carry him out the door.
Monday September 23, 1918:
After celebrating 5 a.m. Mass the next morning and placing the ciborium and chalice in the sacristy, Padre Pio extinguished the fire in the small stove that had effectively taken the chill out of the room. Next he returned to the altar to carefully extinguish the two-foot-high tapered candles that flanked it. Before Padre Pio climbed the steps of the choir loft to say his thanksgiving, he hobbled on tired, aching feet toward the sacristy to purify the sacred vessels he had used. Almost to the doorway, he began carefully rolling up his long sleeves in preparation for the cleansing, when the all-too-familiar voice of Nina Campanile blurted from yards behind him and interrupted the Hail Mary he had silently begun only seconds earlier. Frowning, he turned toward her wondering, Does she have more bad news about her sister? No; he mustn’t think like that! Hadn’t he celebrated Mass for Vittoria’s quick recovery from the influenza and then said three rosaries every day since then for her and her unborn child? He had to trust the Lord. Nevertheless, seconds later when Nina stood before him, her dark eyes gleaming with unshed tears, he anxiously asked, “Your sister; how is she?”
Along with her tears, Nina’s words spilled out in a stream of gratitude. “It’s a miracle! Your prayers worked a miracle, Padre. Molte grazie. Mamma sends her thanks, too, as does Vittoria who can already get out of bed and help us knead the bread dough, just as you predicted.”
“And the baby?”
Tears made Nina’s flushed cheeks glisten as she smiled and said, “Last night Vittoria felt it move inside her!”
Grinning, Pio gave a quick bow toward Christ’s real presence in the tabernacle on the altar and breathed, “Thank You, Jesus.” He turned back toward Nina. “Go home, my daughter, and help your mamma and sister prepare for the arrival of the baby.” With a chuckle he added, “It won’t be long before you’ll be known as Zia Nina, Aunt Nina.”
But as if she hadn’t even heard him, Nina exclaimed, “Padre!”
Startled by the loud cry, he realized her eyes had focused on his hands. How stupid of me! Quickly he unrolled the sleeves of his habit and drew them back over his wounds. “Forza, go—now!” Immediately regretting his harshness, he added in a gentler tone and with a half-smile, “Forgive me, but I’m tired and need to make my thanksgiving, so it would be best if you leave this grumpy priest alone.”
Seemingly undaunted, Nina continued, “But the dark wounds in the center of your hands are still bleeding and don’t look any better than they did Saturday. Something needs to be done about them.”
“I told you not to worry.” Humiliation burned his cheeks. “These are just burns from carbolic acid I spilled on myself when I was preparing to inoculate my students. I’m sure my burns will clear up in a few days.”
“They don’t look anything like the acid burns.” When she suddenly reached out with both hands and pressed down on the material that covered the stigmata, Pio moaned. Tears of pain rolled down his cheeks, and for a moment he thought he might faint.
Nina gasped. “Mi dispiace, I’m so sorry,” she said, her eyes mirroring his pain. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Padre.” Apparently noticing his now-pale face she begged, “Please come sit on a pew until. . . .”
“No, don’t worry, it’s okay,” Pio managed between gritted teeth as the throbbing in his hands began to subside enough to allow the dizziness to wane.
“But I can ask Mamma if she has something to ease the pain for you, Padre. I. . . .”
Pio glared at her. “Nina!” he said as if speaking to an uncooperative child. “Like I told you Saturday, the wounds are minor, nothing to worry about.” In a softer tone, he continued, “Go home, daughter, where your mamma and sister need you.” Pio gave Nina a fatherly pat on her shawl-covered shoulder. “I’ll be fine.” He nodded toward the church door. “Go.”
“Si, Padre, yes.” But Nina sounded unconvinced. Before turning to leave, she peered again at his hands, hidden beneath the long sleeves of his habit. Her hard gaze seemed to penetrate the heavy brown fabric. When she glanced up at him again he saw the unmistakable glint of suspicion—and something else. But what?
The answer hit Pio like a boulder tumbling out of a peasant’s mule cart. She knows! Dear Lord, somehow she knows. Pio knew he had to convince her to not tell anyone, but how should he say it? It could be she doesn’t know, and if that’s the case, saying something would just make her more suspicious and then she really would know the truth. Sighing, he decided to leave it in the Lord’s hands.
Pio watched Nina’s tall, slender form march down the aisle in the central nave. As she passed the side altars dedicated to Immaculate Mary and St. Francis of Assisi, Pio silently pleaded with them to keep Nina silent about the stigmata—if she really did suspect the truth.
As the young kerchiefed Nina passed beneath the low vault, above which perched the choir loft, and before she had a chance to open the heavy wooden door to the outside, Padre Paolino’s hefty frame pushed it open. He almost bumped into her as he strode into the church. Less than a minute later, though Pio could see the priest’s and Nina’s lips moving in conversation, he couldn’t hear what they were saying. But within seconds he knew something was wrong because Nina’s excited gestures in Pio’s direction revealed the essence of the conversation: She had seen the wounds and suspected their supernatural origin.
A few minutes later when Paolino opened the church door for Nina and ushered her outside with a sweep of his arm, Pio breathed a sigh of relief. I must be wrong. Neither of them suspects the truth; otherwise why would both of them be leaving? But before the door swung shut, Paolino waltzed back into the church and lumbered down the aisle toward Pio who still stood in front of the first pew.
Out of breath, Paolino halted before Pio and noisily sucked in huge gulps of air. After straightening his glasses, Paolino finally focused on him, and Pio cringed at the anger leaping from his superior’s dark eyes. “Is it true?” Paolino demanded. “Because if it is, why didn’t you tell me first? I’m your superior, for heavens sake! Tell me now or. . . .”
“Padre Paolino, come quickly!” yelled a voice from the front of the church. Both priests turned toward the voice, and Pio recognized Fra Nicola’s spindly frame and shaggy ten-inch beard silhouetted by the early morning light drifting through the open front door.
In response to Nicola’s frantic arm motions and voice, Paolino excused himself from Pio with a glower and a curt, “I’ll see you later!” Was it a promise or a threat—or both?
Moments later, finally alone in the silence of Our Lady of Grace friary church, Padre Pio shuffled up the steep steps to the choir loft where he savored the solitude and allowed it, and his after-Mass thanksgiving, to massage his taut nerves and ease his worries.
About 11 a.m., plodding on swollen feet, Pio finally headed down the narrow, dimly lit corridor that connected the church to the friary. When he reached the door to his cell, he stopped to glance up at the inscription someone from centuries past had carved into the top of the wide wooden doorframe: “The cross is always ready and awaits you wherever.” Opening his lock-less door, Pio smiled wryly as he mulled over the truth of that single sentence. Today my cross appeared in the form of Nina and Paolino. Pio hobbled into the small room and closed the door behind him. Out of habit, he turned to gaze lovingly at the crucifix which hung on the yellowed wall above the head of his narrow bed. “But I did ask You, Jesus, to accept me as a victim, unworthy though I am. A victim, Lord, who would share in your sufferings all the days of my life. A victim for the end of the pandemic and the war, and for the salvation of all.”
With a sigh, Pio sank onto the edge of the bed, still gazing at the sacred corpus hanging on the crucifix. “And You, in your great mercy, Jesus, gave me the stigmata, a gift I certainly don’t deserve. I still long to suffer for—and with—You, and I accept all the physical pain the stigmata might cause me, but I don’t know how I can bear the humiliation of having people actually see the wounds. I want to suffer secretly, Lord, so that only You know what is happening to me.” A lone tear dribbled down Pio’s cheek as he pleaded, “I won’t stop asking You to remove, in your mercy, not the wounds or the pain—because I want You to inebriate me with pain—but the visible signs of the stigmata which have already caused me such painful embarrassment.”
Though only silence answered Pio’s plea, as always he spiritually abandoned himself into God’s embrace.
How long he remained staring at the crucifix and contemplating Christ’s wounds, he didn’t know, but heavy footsteps and a deep familiar voice broke Pio’s contemplation. Reluctantly he turned toward the doorway through which the ample frame of his superior now strode, making Pio’s small cell suddenly seem claustrophobic.
When Pio started to rise out of respect, Padre Paolino just glared at him through glasses perched on a long, thin nose. “Don’t get up. Stay right there and tell me everything.” He pulled out the one wooden chair from the small table where Pio often wrote letters. Sinking onto the seat and leaning toward him, Paolino repeated, “Tell me everything—now!”
When Pio remained silent, too stunned to speak, Paolino growled, “If you don’t have the decency to tell me your secrets—me, your spiritual director—then at least let me see your hands!” Pio obediently held out his now-trembling hands. Paolino clumsily pushed up his sleeves, exposing the wounds, and Pio gasped at the sudden intense pain caused by the movement of the material. At his cry, the superior glanced up at him.
Fighting back tears, Pio gritted his teeth and scanned his superior’s face, hoping to find at least a glimmer of mercy. What he found was recognition of the agony Pio was experiencing because of Paolino’s rough, impatient actions. And now as the superior’s tone of voice and facial expression melted into those of tender concern, Pio’s heart hungrily absorbed the merciful words uttered in a ragged whisper, “Forgive me, my son.” The tears glistening in the superior’s eyes reflected those threatening to spill from Pio’s. Paolino once again let his gaze fall on the stigmata, now oozing more blood than usual due to the harsh way he had pushed back the sleeves. “Forgive me,” he repeated reverently. As if thinking out loud, he whispered, eyes still fixed on the wounds, “The stigmata; just like our spiritual father St. Francis of Assisi.” Inhaling deeply of the aroma emanating from the wounds, he added, “And the Odor of Sanctity, like so many of the saints in Church history. Dominic, Anthony of Padua, Teresa, to name a few.”
Certain he would break down and sob if he spoke, Pio remained silent, deeply moved by his superior’s sudden change in attitude.
But as quickly as that attitude had reversed, it flipped back again when Paolino sneered at Pio. “You received the stigmata, and yet I had to find out about it from Nina Campanile? She told me today she had suspected the truth three days ago when she saw you. Why didn’t you come to me then?”
How can I make him understand? Pio’s heart ached for the Padre. I need to say something to ease the pain I caused him. Pio decided he’d just have to trust the Lord for the right words. “Mi scusi, please forgive me, Padre Paolino, but ever since Friday morning when I received the wounds I’ve begged Jesus to take away their outward signs. I. . . .” Exhaustion from the emotional as well as physical pains of the morning’s encounters with Paolino and Nina finally caught up with Pio, cutting short his explanation. Staring down at his exposed hands, he barely noticed the warmth of his tears falling on them. Give me strength, Lord. Pray for me, Mary.
Taking a deep breath, Pio raised his head. In spite of his accuser’s scowl which seemed now to blaze with anger, Pio said, “I begged the Lord to take away the signs of the stigmata, but not the pain. If Jesus had taken away the outward signs, there would’ve been no need to tell you anything. That was my hope.” Trying to read his superior’s enigmatic expression, he added, “Forgive me, Padre, please.”
As if embarrassed, Paolino cleared his throat and stood. “Forgive?” He blinked his eyes, and a tear rolled from each. “Of course, my son.” Turning toward the door, he took one step forward, stopped, and turned again toward Pio. “But I must write immediately to the provincial Padre Benedetto about this matter, otherwise I, too, will need to ask forgiveness.” Before turning again to leave, Paolino sternly ordered, “Don’t mention the stigmata to anyone; do you hear?”
“Si, Padre. But what about Nina Campanile? She. . . .”
“Don’t worry; I’ll order her not to tell anyone.” With that, Paolino marched out of Pio’s cell.
But by the first week of October, it was obvious to Padre Pio that his superior’s demand for silence from Nina Campanile had failed. The same day she saw my wounds she must’ve started telling people about them, Pio grumbled silently, because now it seems as if everyone in southern Italy knows. Even his family in Pietrelcina knew, because his brother Michele’s wife Giuseppa had, only two days ago, traveled to the friary in a mule cart over the eighty-some rocky mountainous miles, with their nine-year-old son Francesco, to verify the facts. At this rate, Pio now thought, Papa and Michele working in America will soon know.
And on this unusually hot afternoon, the first Saturday in October, the long line outside Padre Pio’s confessional testified to the fact that the news of his stigmata had found no obstacle in passing from peasant to peasant and cottage to cottage; from the village of San Giovanni Rotondo to God-only-knew-how-far beyond that. Now in the stuffy dimness of the cramped confessional, the young priest, exhausted from hearing confessions for the past three hours, slumped against the thin wall that separated him from the penitent waiting on the other side. He knew she was female, because as soon as he slid open the small eye-level door and revealed the screen that hid her face, the heavy scent of her perfume immediately ambushed his senses.
“Bless me, Padre, for I have sinned. It’s. . . .” As the woman began her confession, Pio felt his lungs begin to congest from the oppressive heat and the now-nauseating scent of perfume. With one of his gloved hands, he stifled a cough that threatened to erupt. Even that slight movement caused the brown fingerless glove to pull at the scab that had begun to form over the bleeding wound in his palm. Wincing, he heard the woman continue, “Since my last confession I lied four times to. . . .”
The woman’s heavy scent forced Pio’s lungs to spasm, and his wracking coughs interrupted her. When he could again breathe normally, he cleared his throat, apologized, and encouraged her to continue her confession. “Si, yes, Padre,” she said.
Minutes after absolving and blessing her, Pio listened to her leave and to the next penitent take her place. He opened his door to allow the lingering perfume to dissipate. After taking a deep, cleansing breath of the somewhat-clearer air of the church, he glanced at the line of penitents still waiting. Maybe twenty more. Silencing a groan, Pio shook his head. God must think I need to do an awful lot of penance to have sent me so many penitents eager to confess on such a hot day. Pio peered into the dim light that shadowed the people toward the end of the line, making them look like gray, faceless, genderless mannequins. Give me grace to be patient. Sighing, he added, Speak to each of them through me, Lord.
Closing the confessional door once more, he heard his empty stomach grumble. He thought back to this morning’s breakfast in the friary dining room and how he had eaten only one slice of the homemade bread Fra Nicola had accepted yesterday during his begging rounds. This morning Pio had also managed to avoid taking any of the steaming eggs Nicola had offered Paolino and himself. No wonder I’ve sometimes felt light-headed today, Pio now thought. Even though he knew his constant fasting bordered on obsessive and would eventually draw the disapproval of his superior, Pio wanted to spiritually strengthen his soul to withstand the evil that seemed to continually worm its way into his life. Why do I know the state of each penitent’s soul and yet can’t discern my own? I must be the world’s worst sinner; why else would God hide from me? But he pushed those tormenting thoughts aside as the next penitent knelt to confess.
For the next hour, Padre Pio spent his spiritual strength hearing the confessions of the remaining penitents. At least that last penitent I heard let me know I only have one more to go, he thought, sighing with relief. But at the same time he was ashamed for feeling exhausted, impatient, and almost desperate to escape the near-claustrophobic confines of the confessional. Now, as he leaned once more against the thin wall, Pio closed his eyes and sighed.
“Francesco?” the female penitent hesitantly began.
That voice. Pio opened his eyes, sat up straight, and stared at the small, dark-screened door that hid her face. That voice! Immediately he knew it belonged to his younger sister Pellegrina who had broken their mother’s heart by getting pregnant out of wedlock, not just once, but twice, to two different men. Thank God, Pellegrina kept the babies! Though Pio thought she was outwardly the most beautiful of his three sisters, he knew that inwardly Pellegrina’s soul was shrouded by the sinful ways she refused to forsake. So what’s she doing in the confessional—my confessional—now? Why would she travel to the friary for confession when she lived in Pietrelcina more than eighteen hours away by mule cart over rocky dirt roads? Too many questions now flooded Padre Pio’s mind and heart, triggering another coughing spasm.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
Chapter 2 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
SECRET
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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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.
______________________________________________________________
Monday, August 3, 2009
Fictional Bio of St. Padre Pio--Chapter One and Intro
Pierced by Love:
A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
by
Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti
Introduction:
To tell the complete story of St. Padre Pio’s eighty-one years, and to include his canonization, exhumation, and any timely updates on his hospital, friary, church, prayer groups, and other humanitarian projects would take multiple volumes. For the purposes of the enclosed fictionalized biography, I have focused on key events in St. Pio’s life; and I have included some of the most-influential-on-his-ministry individuals, but certainly not all of them.
Though most of the characters and dates in the novel are authentic, some of the characters, such as Maria Orto in Chapter One, are composites of the real people who populated Pio’s life. If you would like to read one of the most accurate and fascinating nonfiction biographies of Padre Pio, I recommend Bernard Ruffin’s Padre Pio: the True Story (Revised and Expanded), published by Our Sunday Visitor, ©1991. As my sources for my book Pierced by Love, which follows below, I used over 100 books about St. Padre Pio.
In most instances, the timeline of my Padre Pio novel follows reality as closely as possible. Even the characters that are from real life (such as Padre Paolino, Fra Nicola, and American heiress Adelia Mary McAlphin Pyle), their physical features (including beards, glasses, and body structures), and their personalities are as close to reality as possible based on research. Even many of the minor characters such as Nina Campanile are portrayed based on facts found in my research, including the fact that, according to Ruffin, she was the first one to spy the stigmata and start telling everyone about them, much to the chagrin of Padre Pio.
In Chapters Three and Four, the confessional scenes with Pellegrina are fictionalized, but the names, ages, and occupations of Padre Pio’s family members, and the details about occurrences such as their deaths, are true. One exception: In real life Pellegrina may not have been the individual who revealed their sister Felicita’s death to Pio. Also the timing of his finding out about the death and the timing of his family finding out about the stigmata are approximated. But based on my research, especially facts found in Ruffin’s biography, Pellegrina truly did scandalize her family in the ways presented in Chapters Three and Four.
I was especially careful when writing about St. Padre Pio to present him to the reader as the personality he truly was, including his habits and spirituality, his spiritual gifts, and his weaknesses as well as strengths. I did this through fictionalized dialogue and scenes based on true events found in my research.
Though I based a lot of Padre Pio’s words on his Letters, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, and also on his words found in books I researched, most of the novel’s dialogue I fictionalized. True are such details as how many friars were left at the friary during World War I; how the young male students under St. Pio’s direction at that time suffered from the influenza pandemic; and how some died. True, too, are such events as Padres Paolino and Pio inoculating the students on their posteriors and the accidental burning of their flesh with the carbolic acid. In other words, almost all of the main incidents and anecdotes in the novel are true with only the dialogue and other minor details fictionalized. Even the interiors and exteriors of the buildings at the Our Lady of Grace complex are as close to reality as possible based on research.
Concerning the stigmatization, many of the hundreds of biographies written about St. Padre Pio differ as to which individual first found out about his stigmata, so I stuck with what Ruffin said in his biography. Throughout the novel, I have stayed as true to the real dates of events as possible, based on my research.
In Chapter Three, I only surmised that St. Pio’s brother’s wife Giuseppa had visited the friary to verify the fact of the stigmata. Throughout the novel I tried to stick to the facts as much as possible in regard to details such as distances, modes of travel, and styles of dress,
Padre Pio’s confessional in Chapters Three and Four has a wooden door on it, much like confessionals in American churches during the twentieth century, while in real life, Pio’s confessional had a curtain rather than a door. You will see that for drama’s sake, I used a door. In Chapter Four, Pellegrina’s lover Julius is fictitious, but according to Ruffin her scandalous behavior involving a lover was real. The details about St. Pio’s family members having influenza are true. In Chapter Five the garden scene is fictionalized while the visitation of the soul from Purgatory is not. And the descriptions of the garden, friary, and church are as accurate as my research would allow.
In conclusion, to go through each of the remaining chapters of the novel, as I have done with the first five above, would occupy too much space, so I hope that the above examples give you a clearer picture of the facts and fiction contained in the entire novel. After having written six nonfiction books about St. Padre Pio (see below), I trusted it was time to write this fictionalized biography in order to give you a more colorful and emotionally involving story. I pray, my friend, that as you read the enclosed novel, St. Padre Pio, by God’s grace, will touch your heart, mind, and soul and fill you with His joy and peace!
VICTIM PRIEST
Chapter 1
Friday September 20, 1918
San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy
Maybe the rain kept most of them away. Maybe the war—or the epidemic. Whatever the reason for the small number of parishioners at his 5 a.m. Mass, young Padre Pio gave the final blessing to the handful of local peasants already trudging toward the church exit on their way to their cottages and fields.
After carefully extinguishing the two tapered candles that flanked the altar, Pio barely noticed the aroma of melted beeswax as he turned and strode on sandaled feet toward the stairway of the choir loft where he always said his after-Mass thanksgiving. The war. He sighed, thinking about the so-called ‘Great’ War. Why does the government think it has to draft priests and other religious? We only had seven friars to begin with to serve the local peasants, and now we’re down to only three of us. The four that were drafted—what if they die in this insane war? Almost to the choir stairway, Pio glanced up at the three-foot-high crucifix perched above the rear arch of the church. His voice and bearded chin trembled with emotion as he whispered upward at the lifelike image of Christ on the cross, “Please bring them back to us, Lord—alive.”
Now in the silence of the small, ancient friary church, almost to the first step of the choir stairway, Pio fingered the rosary he held in his hand. My weapon, he thought. A weapon to combat the evils of the war, the epidemic, the. . . .
An eruption of hysterical screaming broke Pio’s thoughts, startling him all the more because he had assumed he was alone. Inches from the choir stairway he wheeled around to see what was happening at the rear of the church from where the voice now shouted, “This is my church!”
Pio saw a woman stomping toward him from the side nave where she must have concealed herself in the shadows. Too stunned by her fury to be afraid, he stared at her as she approached, screeching obscenities.
Stopping no more than ten feet from Pio, the woman glared upward at the fresco of St. Michael the Archangel. Pointing at the image she cried out, “Where were you when he needed you?”
Was this Maria Orto from down the hillside, the young woman whose wedding Mass Padre Pio had celebrated just last Saturday? He barely recognized the barefooted peasant woman, her grimy face contorted with anger beneath disheveled black hair and tattered scarf. Her whole appearance, including ripped dress and bare feet, sent arrows of concern through Pio. What had happened?
Still glaring upward at St. Michael and shaking her finger at the image, the short and stocky Maria cried out, “You should have protected him! He didn’t stand a chance without your help!”
Had a demon possessed Maria or was she suffering from a mental breakdown? In his eight years as a priest, Padre Pio had seen only one instance of true demonic possession, and Padre Deglespositi had handled that one. Nevertheless, Pio now marched unafraid toward the young woman, his long Franciscan habit brushing his ankles. God was infinitely more powerful than the Evil One, and hadn’t Pio just received Jesus in the Eucharist? The Padre knew that just the name of Jesus could overpower demons, as St. Paul had done while he and Silas were on their way to a place of prayer.
“You could have kept him from dying,” Maria now roared up at the winged sword-wielding Michael. “You could have. . . .”
The sudden pressure of Padre Pio’s hands on the unsuspecting woman’s shoulders silenced her. “Maria, look at me,” he commanded, turning her around to face him. The anger seemed to have left her as soon as she saw her pastor’s face, and she crumpled into his arms, her now-grief-filled eyes overflowing with tears. “Padre,” was all she managed to utter between sobs.
Knowing now that he was not dealing here with demon-possession, the young priest gently said, “Come with me, Maria.” He helped her to stand erect and then, supporting her wobbling frame, guided her to the nearest pew where he made her sit while he stood in front of her. “Tell me what’s wrong, Maria.”
“They killed him,” she groaned out as if the words seared her throat.
“What?”
“They killed my Domenico!” She shook a scratched fist upward at the fresco of St. Michael. “He could have stopped them, but he didn’t, even though I’ve been praying to him every day since Domenico left. I’ve been asking St. Michael to protect him, but he didn’t; he let my husband, my sweet Domenico. . . .” A sob choked off the rest of her words.
Suspecting the answer and angered by the senseless death, Pio growled out the question, “Who killed him?” Seeing Maria flinch at his harsh tone, he placed his hand on her shaking shoulder and softened his voice with, “Poverina, poor little thing, who killed him?”
Maria’s own voice was an agonized whisper as she gazed through tears at Pio. “The soldiers. The Allied soldiers, Padre. I found out late yesterday.”
“Poverina,” Pio repeated, his young priestly heart aching for her. Through misty eyes, the priest asked, “Why didn’t you come to the friary right away?” Pio hoped the empathy in his heart transferred itself through his eyes to Maria as he studied her tear-streaked, dusty face and listened to her distressing story.
“Yesterday I had just returned to our little cottage after working all day at my parents’ small plot of land, when a messenger from the Italian army arrived.” Maria sniffled, fighting back tears. “When I opened the door and saw his uniform and ugly frown, I knew something terrible had happened to my Domenico. When the soldier—without showing a bit of pity or compassion—told me about my husband’s violent death, my heart seemed to freeze up like an olive tree in an ice storm. I barely noticed the soldier leave as I stood in the doorway, still numb. How long I stayed like that, I don’t know, but when the shock began to ease, I lost control of my emotions.” Barefooted and with grief clouding her reason, Maria had fled from the little cottage Domenico had built for them and wandered aimlessly all night, not caring when her frequent falls in the dark ripped her dress or skinned and bruised her hands, legs, and feet and transformed her usually tidy appearance into one of disheveled filth.
Staring now into Maria’s dark, tear-glazed eyes, Pio said, “Poverina, listen to me—and obey.”
His suddenly commanding tone seemed to stop the flow of tears. She sniffled, gazed up at him, took a deep breath, and said, “Si, Padre, yes.”
“Go immediately to your parents’ cottage and tell them what happened. Stay there until they decide you’re ready to return to your own place.” Pio knew that Maria needed more than her parents, though, so he added, “Attend 5 a.m. Mass every morning and don’t hesitate to come to Padre Paolino, Fra Nicola, or me for advice and prayer.”
A feeble smile of hope replaced the frown of desolation on Maria’s young face when the Padre said, “I’ll pray a Rosary for you, and you pray one, too, every day. Ask the mother of Our Lord to help you, and she will. Trust Jesus to help you through her. Remember how He listened to her at the wedding at Cana, when Mary asked Him to somehow get more wine for the feast? Jesus, Son of God, obeyed his mother, even though he said, ‘Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.’ Maria, you must trust Him to help you, too, through his mother’s intercession.”
“Si, Padre, but the pain.” Her aching heart revealed itself through her hoarse tone as she choked out, “Why does God allow war, death and suffering; what’s the purpose of the pain in my heart that won’t go away?”
Tenderly touching his finger to her wet cheek, the priest said, “I know it’s hard to understand, but God doesn’t will death, war, suffering, and pain, but He does allow it to happen because He’s given each of us a free will.” How can I convince her, Lord, that You can turn her sorrow into something useful and good? The sweet image of Christ’s mother manifested itself in Pio’s mind and, along with it, the answer to his question. “You’ve surely heard by now, Maria, about the appearances of the Mother of God at Fatima, Portugal, only a little over a year ago.”
Sniffling, Maria answered, “Si, Papa read to us about it from the newspapers he bought in Foggia.”
“So don’t you remember him saying that at Fatima Mary urged us to accept willingly whatever suffering enters our lives? She said to offer our sufferings to God as prayer for the souls of poor sinners who’ll end up in hell if we don’t suffer and pray on their behalf.” The young priest knew he could quote Colossians 1:24 to Maria as proof that God, too, believed there could be a good purpose for suffering, but Pio also knew that in her frame of mind she wouldn’t be able to absorb what he said. “Will you promise me you’ll say the Rosary every day and offer your pain to Jesus as prayer for others?”
Maria smeared the dust and dirt on her hands across her cheeks as she attempted to brush away her tears. “Si, Padre, I’ll try; molte grazie, thank you very much.”
After ushering Maria to the front door and repeating his advice to her, Pio closed the door behind her. Turning, he headed once again toward the choir loft stairway at the rear of the church. As he trudged up the wooden stairs—polished to a fine sheen by hundreds of years of friars mounting the same steps to pray in the same choir loft in the same seventeenth-century church—he mourned silently for Maria and Domenico, for the four absent friars who might never return, for all the soldiers forced to fight in this ungodly war. Halfway up the stairs, young Pio unwillingly recalled his own recent service in the Italian army. Known then as Private Francesco Forgione, he had served a total of 182 days of active duty during a period of about two and a half years interrupted by three extended sick leaves. Only six months ago, the military doctors in Naples had honorably discharged him because recurring lung problems had reduced the normally stocky, five-foot-five-inch Francesco to a weak, near-skeletal condition. Honorable discharge? Pio remembered how it hadn’t seemed “honorable” when was forced to leave behind so many sick and wounded comrades. Though he despised how war spilled so much blood and stole so many lives, he regretted how his discharge forced him to stop ministering to the ever-increasing number of traumatized soldiers who had come to him for his priestly blessing and prayers. After his discharge, all Pio could do was to keep them in his prayers, offer up his sufferings for them, and trust the Lord to send others to minister to his comrades.
When Pio had arrived here at the Capuchin friary on March 18, he had hoped its remote location in the heel of southern Italy would shelter him, hide him from the constant threat of death and from the horrific sight and smell of the dead and dying. But too soon the truth surfaced: there was nowhere to hide. Even here at Our Lady of Grace friary perched on a rocky hillside and guarded by southern Italy’s inhospitable Gargano Mountains, death was stalking and had already claimed, not only Domenico, but other victims, and not just from the war. My students, Pio now thought, finally kneeling alone before the crucifix in the choir loft. What will happen to them?
Out of the fifteen boys who boarded and studied at the friary seminary under Pio’s guidance, at least two-thirds now suffered in the infirmary with the Spanish influenza which, according to the latest report from local San Giovanni Rotondo citizens, had reached the level of a worldwide pandemic, already having killed nearly a hundred townspeople as well as thousands in Italy alone. Two of Pio’s students had died at the beginning of the week.
This morning before Padre Pio celebrated Mass, he had checked on the remaining students suffering in the infirmary. Skeletons, he now thought. Just bones with skin stretched across. Many of the boys had complained to him that they couldn’t sleep, and most couldn’t retain any food. Chills, fevers, headaches, weakness, endless coughing; the students had it all. Just the pitiful sight of their suffering had caused his own lungs to spasm and to echo the coughing of the boys.
Now alone in the friary choir loft, trying to make his usual after-Mass thanksgiving, all thirty-one-year-old Pio could think about were his sick students and the ungodly World War that daily threatened to strike the friary and the nearest town, San Giovanni Rotondo, less than two miles away. With bombs having already fallen on Foggia, twenty-five miles away, the citizens of San Giovanni daily begged Padre Pio to ask God to spare their homes and town from the ravages of the war. The twin specters of war and influenza now churned inside Pio’s head, preventing him from making his thanksgiving. Letting his shoulders sag in a sigh beneath his long brown Franciscan habit, Pio glanced overhead at the larger-than-life mural of St. Michael the Archangel. Italy could use some angelic protection right about now, he thought, wondering what it would take to vanquish the epidemic.
Pio glanced up at the meter-high cypress crucifix. Where are you, Lord? So often these days God seemed to be hiding from Pio. Are the influenza and war Your punishments for the sins of mercenary governments only concerned about political, military, and financial gain? No! Hadn’t he just told Maria that God does not will suffering, death, pain, and war? Pio shook his head, trying to rid it of the gruesome images of brutality and death, then re-focused his attention on the lifelike crucified corpus before him, with the intention of performing his customary thanksgiving. But within seconds his thoughts strayed again. Maybe the governments do need purging by the pandemic and war; but my students? Young boys; totally innocent. “Where are You, Lord? We need You.” Pio’s complaint punctuated the other-wise silent church whose thick, ancient walls had heard hundreds of thousands of pleas throughout the centuries.
When the expected silence answered him, Pio forced his mind on the crucifix, on Christ’s own passion and death on the cross. Gazing at the realistic blood oozing from the wounds of the corpus before him, Pio appreciated anew the Savior’s sacrifice. The young priest lovingly studied the graphic bulge of the muscles and ribs, the sacred face contorted in agony, the iron spikes piercing the hands and feet of the corpus, and the figure’s arms and legs carved to appear disjointed as they must have been as gravity pulled apart the Savior’s joints. Such pain suffered for us, thought Pio. For me. Unworthy sinner. How could the Creator of the universe sacrifice so much for one young priest—for all sinners like him?
Oh Jesus, an eternity of thanksgivings would not be enough. Let me join You on the cross today—forever. Unite me to Yourself and use me to continue Your suffering here on earth for the salvation of souls. When Mary appeared to three shepherd children at Fatima, she asked all people for sacrifices; sacrifices offered up to God as prayers for humanity. Unworthy though I am, I offer myself now to You, Jesus, as a victim. A victim sharing in Your sufferings for the end of the pandemic, the end of the war, the salvation of all.
Only silence answered Pio’s offer. Undaunted, he spiritually abandoned himself into God’s embrace and continued to contemplate the corpus whose tears threatened to spill from its lifelike eyes and whose dramatic expression seemed to beg Pio to share in its sufferings. Yet a palpable peace began to spread throughout the young priest’s mind, body, and soul, and a smile budded on his lips. And as if in answer to Pio’s plea for God to accept him as a victim, a mysterious Being suddenly appeared hovering where the crucifix had stood just seconds ago. As Padre Pio stared at the blood dripping from the Being’s hands, feet, and side, terror replaced the peace he had experienced only moments ago. As if frozen by a blast of icy mountain air, Pio stared at the celestial person who held a long weapon whose bladed tip spewed fire. Barely able to breathe, Pio steeled himself for what he assumed would follow: his death.
Nearly paralyzed by fear, the young priest stared in horror as arrows of light burst from the mysterious Being and pierced Pio’s hands, feet, and side. Pain ripped through him, forcing him to collapse onto the floor of the choir loft. What’s happening to me? Shuddering, he glanced up at the Being from whom had emanated the arrows of light. Will he attack me again? But the apparition disappeared, leaving Pio alone to groan in anguish. Lifting one of his throbbing hands, he stared in horror at the blood oozing from the fresh wound in the middle of his palm. Was the other hand bleeding? Feet and side too? Just before losing consciousness from the pain, he muttered the last words of his crucified Lord, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
_________________________________________________________________
♪♪♪♪Here is some publishing news about the author so that you can know her better:
Nonfiction Saints Books by Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti:
Published by Our Sunday Visitor—Padre Pio's Words of Hope and Praying In the Presence of Our Lord with St. Padre Pio and Praying the Psalms with St. Padre Pio (www.osv.com)
Published by Pauline Books & Media—Saint Pio of Pietrelcina: Rich In Love (www.pauline.org)
Published by The Word Among Us Press—Praying with Padre Pio and Praying with Faustina (http://wau.org)
Published by Hard Shell Word Factory—Poor Pio, a picture book for children, and two Christian historical novels, Katie’s Song and Katie’s Tomorrows (www.hardshell.com)
Another Nonfiction Book by Eileen:
Published by Chelsea House Publishers—Molly Pitcher (www.chelseahouse.com)
Fiction Books by Eileen:
Published by Hard Shell Word Factory—two Christian historical novels, Katie’s Song and Katie’s Tomorrows (www.hardshell.com)
Published Online at Facebook and Blogger.com: Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
Also see Eileen’s Website: www.kcnet.org/~edbertan
Also see Eileen’s Blog: www.eileendunnbertanzetti.blogspot.com
A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
by
Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti
Introduction:
To tell the complete story of St. Padre Pio’s eighty-one years, and to include his canonization, exhumation, and any timely updates on his hospital, friary, church, prayer groups, and other humanitarian projects would take multiple volumes. For the purposes of the enclosed fictionalized biography, I have focused on key events in St. Pio’s life; and I have included some of the most-influential-on-his-ministry individuals, but certainly not all of them.
Though most of the characters and dates in the novel are authentic, some of the characters, such as Maria Orto in Chapter One, are composites of the real people who populated Pio’s life. If you would like to read one of the most accurate and fascinating nonfiction biographies of Padre Pio, I recommend Bernard Ruffin’s Padre Pio: the True Story (Revised and Expanded), published by Our Sunday Visitor, ©1991. As my sources for my book Pierced by Love, which follows below, I used over 100 books about St. Padre Pio.
In most instances, the timeline of my Padre Pio novel follows reality as closely as possible. Even the characters that are from real life (such as Padre Paolino, Fra Nicola, and American heiress Adelia Mary McAlphin Pyle), their physical features (including beards, glasses, and body structures), and their personalities are as close to reality as possible based on research. Even many of the minor characters such as Nina Campanile are portrayed based on facts found in my research, including the fact that, according to Ruffin, she was the first one to spy the stigmata and start telling everyone about them, much to the chagrin of Padre Pio.
In Chapters Three and Four, the confessional scenes with Pellegrina are fictionalized, but the names, ages, and occupations of Padre Pio’s family members, and the details about occurrences such as their deaths, are true. One exception: In real life Pellegrina may not have been the individual who revealed their sister Felicita’s death to Pio. Also the timing of his finding out about the death and the timing of his family finding out about the stigmata are approximated. But based on my research, especially facts found in Ruffin’s biography, Pellegrina truly did scandalize her family in the ways presented in Chapters Three and Four.
I was especially careful when writing about St. Padre Pio to present him to the reader as the personality he truly was, including his habits and spirituality, his spiritual gifts, and his weaknesses as well as strengths. I did this through fictionalized dialogue and scenes based on true events found in my research.
Though I based a lot of Padre Pio’s words on his Letters, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, and also on his words found in books I researched, most of the novel’s dialogue I fictionalized. True are such details as how many friars were left at the friary during World War I; how the young male students under St. Pio’s direction at that time suffered from the influenza pandemic; and how some died. True, too, are such events as Padres Paolino and Pio inoculating the students on their posteriors and the accidental burning of their flesh with the carbolic acid. In other words, almost all of the main incidents and anecdotes in the novel are true with only the dialogue and other minor details fictionalized. Even the interiors and exteriors of the buildings at the Our Lady of Grace complex are as close to reality as possible based on research.
Concerning the stigmatization, many of the hundreds of biographies written about St. Padre Pio differ as to which individual first found out about his stigmata, so I stuck with what Ruffin said in his biography. Throughout the novel, I have stayed as true to the real dates of events as possible, based on my research.
In Chapter Three, I only surmised that St. Pio’s brother’s wife Giuseppa had visited the friary to verify the fact of the stigmata. Throughout the novel I tried to stick to the facts as much as possible in regard to details such as distances, modes of travel, and styles of dress,
Padre Pio’s confessional in Chapters Three and Four has a wooden door on it, much like confessionals in American churches during the twentieth century, while in real life, Pio’s confessional had a curtain rather than a door. You will see that for drama’s sake, I used a door. In Chapter Four, Pellegrina’s lover Julius is fictitious, but according to Ruffin her scandalous behavior involving a lover was real. The details about St. Pio’s family members having influenza are true. In Chapter Five the garden scene is fictionalized while the visitation of the soul from Purgatory is not. And the descriptions of the garden, friary, and church are as accurate as my research would allow.
In conclusion, to go through each of the remaining chapters of the novel, as I have done with the first five above, would occupy too much space, so I hope that the above examples give you a clearer picture of the facts and fiction contained in the entire novel. After having written six nonfiction books about St. Padre Pio (see below), I trusted it was time to write this fictionalized biography in order to give you a more colorful and emotionally involving story. I pray, my friend, that as you read the enclosed novel, St. Padre Pio, by God’s grace, will touch your heart, mind, and soul and fill you with His joy and peace!
VICTIM PRIEST
Chapter 1
Friday September 20, 1918
San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy
Maybe the rain kept most of them away. Maybe the war—or the epidemic. Whatever the reason for the small number of parishioners at his 5 a.m. Mass, young Padre Pio gave the final blessing to the handful of local peasants already trudging toward the church exit on their way to their cottages and fields.
After carefully extinguishing the two tapered candles that flanked the altar, Pio barely noticed the aroma of melted beeswax as he turned and strode on sandaled feet toward the stairway of the choir loft where he always said his after-Mass thanksgiving. The war. He sighed, thinking about the so-called ‘Great’ War. Why does the government think it has to draft priests and other religious? We only had seven friars to begin with to serve the local peasants, and now we’re down to only three of us. The four that were drafted—what if they die in this insane war? Almost to the choir stairway, Pio glanced up at the three-foot-high crucifix perched above the rear arch of the church. His voice and bearded chin trembled with emotion as he whispered upward at the lifelike image of Christ on the cross, “Please bring them back to us, Lord—alive.”
Now in the silence of the small, ancient friary church, almost to the first step of the choir stairway, Pio fingered the rosary he held in his hand. My weapon, he thought. A weapon to combat the evils of the war, the epidemic, the. . . .
An eruption of hysterical screaming broke Pio’s thoughts, startling him all the more because he had assumed he was alone. Inches from the choir stairway he wheeled around to see what was happening at the rear of the church from where the voice now shouted, “This is my church!”
Pio saw a woman stomping toward him from the side nave where she must have concealed herself in the shadows. Too stunned by her fury to be afraid, he stared at her as she approached, screeching obscenities.
Stopping no more than ten feet from Pio, the woman glared upward at the fresco of St. Michael the Archangel. Pointing at the image she cried out, “Where were you when he needed you?”
Was this Maria Orto from down the hillside, the young woman whose wedding Mass Padre Pio had celebrated just last Saturday? He barely recognized the barefooted peasant woman, her grimy face contorted with anger beneath disheveled black hair and tattered scarf. Her whole appearance, including ripped dress and bare feet, sent arrows of concern through Pio. What had happened?
Still glaring upward at St. Michael and shaking her finger at the image, the short and stocky Maria cried out, “You should have protected him! He didn’t stand a chance without your help!”
Had a demon possessed Maria or was she suffering from a mental breakdown? In his eight years as a priest, Padre Pio had seen only one instance of true demonic possession, and Padre Deglespositi had handled that one. Nevertheless, Pio now marched unafraid toward the young woman, his long Franciscan habit brushing his ankles. God was infinitely more powerful than the Evil One, and hadn’t Pio just received Jesus in the Eucharist? The Padre knew that just the name of Jesus could overpower demons, as St. Paul had done while he and Silas were on their way to a place of prayer.
“You could have kept him from dying,” Maria now roared up at the winged sword-wielding Michael. “You could have. . . .”
The sudden pressure of Padre Pio’s hands on the unsuspecting woman’s shoulders silenced her. “Maria, look at me,” he commanded, turning her around to face him. The anger seemed to have left her as soon as she saw her pastor’s face, and she crumpled into his arms, her now-grief-filled eyes overflowing with tears. “Padre,” was all she managed to utter between sobs.
Knowing now that he was not dealing here with demon-possession, the young priest gently said, “Come with me, Maria.” He helped her to stand erect and then, supporting her wobbling frame, guided her to the nearest pew where he made her sit while he stood in front of her. “Tell me what’s wrong, Maria.”
“They killed him,” she groaned out as if the words seared her throat.
“What?”
“They killed my Domenico!” She shook a scratched fist upward at the fresco of St. Michael. “He could have stopped them, but he didn’t, even though I’ve been praying to him every day since Domenico left. I’ve been asking St. Michael to protect him, but he didn’t; he let my husband, my sweet Domenico. . . .” A sob choked off the rest of her words.
Suspecting the answer and angered by the senseless death, Pio growled out the question, “Who killed him?” Seeing Maria flinch at his harsh tone, he placed his hand on her shaking shoulder and softened his voice with, “Poverina, poor little thing, who killed him?”
Maria’s own voice was an agonized whisper as she gazed through tears at Pio. “The soldiers. The Allied soldiers, Padre. I found out late yesterday.”
“Poverina,” Pio repeated, his young priestly heart aching for her. Through misty eyes, the priest asked, “Why didn’t you come to the friary right away?” Pio hoped the empathy in his heart transferred itself through his eyes to Maria as he studied her tear-streaked, dusty face and listened to her distressing story.
“Yesterday I had just returned to our little cottage after working all day at my parents’ small plot of land, when a messenger from the Italian army arrived.” Maria sniffled, fighting back tears. “When I opened the door and saw his uniform and ugly frown, I knew something terrible had happened to my Domenico. When the soldier—without showing a bit of pity or compassion—told me about my husband’s violent death, my heart seemed to freeze up like an olive tree in an ice storm. I barely noticed the soldier leave as I stood in the doorway, still numb. How long I stayed like that, I don’t know, but when the shock began to ease, I lost control of my emotions.” Barefooted and with grief clouding her reason, Maria had fled from the little cottage Domenico had built for them and wandered aimlessly all night, not caring when her frequent falls in the dark ripped her dress or skinned and bruised her hands, legs, and feet and transformed her usually tidy appearance into one of disheveled filth.
Staring now into Maria’s dark, tear-glazed eyes, Pio said, “Poverina, listen to me—and obey.”
His suddenly commanding tone seemed to stop the flow of tears. She sniffled, gazed up at him, took a deep breath, and said, “Si, Padre, yes.”
“Go immediately to your parents’ cottage and tell them what happened. Stay there until they decide you’re ready to return to your own place.” Pio knew that Maria needed more than her parents, though, so he added, “Attend 5 a.m. Mass every morning and don’t hesitate to come to Padre Paolino, Fra Nicola, or me for advice and prayer.”
A feeble smile of hope replaced the frown of desolation on Maria’s young face when the Padre said, “I’ll pray a Rosary for you, and you pray one, too, every day. Ask the mother of Our Lord to help you, and she will. Trust Jesus to help you through her. Remember how He listened to her at the wedding at Cana, when Mary asked Him to somehow get more wine for the feast? Jesus, Son of God, obeyed his mother, even though he said, ‘Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.’ Maria, you must trust Him to help you, too, through his mother’s intercession.”
“Si, Padre, but the pain.” Her aching heart revealed itself through her hoarse tone as she choked out, “Why does God allow war, death and suffering; what’s the purpose of the pain in my heart that won’t go away?”
Tenderly touching his finger to her wet cheek, the priest said, “I know it’s hard to understand, but God doesn’t will death, war, suffering, and pain, but He does allow it to happen because He’s given each of us a free will.” How can I convince her, Lord, that You can turn her sorrow into something useful and good? The sweet image of Christ’s mother manifested itself in Pio’s mind and, along with it, the answer to his question. “You’ve surely heard by now, Maria, about the appearances of the Mother of God at Fatima, Portugal, only a little over a year ago.”
Sniffling, Maria answered, “Si, Papa read to us about it from the newspapers he bought in Foggia.”
“So don’t you remember him saying that at Fatima Mary urged us to accept willingly whatever suffering enters our lives? She said to offer our sufferings to God as prayer for the souls of poor sinners who’ll end up in hell if we don’t suffer and pray on their behalf.” The young priest knew he could quote Colossians 1:24 to Maria as proof that God, too, believed there could be a good purpose for suffering, but Pio also knew that in her frame of mind she wouldn’t be able to absorb what he said. “Will you promise me you’ll say the Rosary every day and offer your pain to Jesus as prayer for others?”
Maria smeared the dust and dirt on her hands across her cheeks as she attempted to brush away her tears. “Si, Padre, I’ll try; molte grazie, thank you very much.”
After ushering Maria to the front door and repeating his advice to her, Pio closed the door behind her. Turning, he headed once again toward the choir loft stairway at the rear of the church. As he trudged up the wooden stairs—polished to a fine sheen by hundreds of years of friars mounting the same steps to pray in the same choir loft in the same seventeenth-century church—he mourned silently for Maria and Domenico, for the four absent friars who might never return, for all the soldiers forced to fight in this ungodly war. Halfway up the stairs, young Pio unwillingly recalled his own recent service in the Italian army. Known then as Private Francesco Forgione, he had served a total of 182 days of active duty during a period of about two and a half years interrupted by three extended sick leaves. Only six months ago, the military doctors in Naples had honorably discharged him because recurring lung problems had reduced the normally stocky, five-foot-five-inch Francesco to a weak, near-skeletal condition. Honorable discharge? Pio remembered how it hadn’t seemed “honorable” when was forced to leave behind so many sick and wounded comrades. Though he despised how war spilled so much blood and stole so many lives, he regretted how his discharge forced him to stop ministering to the ever-increasing number of traumatized soldiers who had come to him for his priestly blessing and prayers. After his discharge, all Pio could do was to keep them in his prayers, offer up his sufferings for them, and trust the Lord to send others to minister to his comrades.
When Pio had arrived here at the Capuchin friary on March 18, he had hoped its remote location in the heel of southern Italy would shelter him, hide him from the constant threat of death and from the horrific sight and smell of the dead and dying. But too soon the truth surfaced: there was nowhere to hide. Even here at Our Lady of Grace friary perched on a rocky hillside and guarded by southern Italy’s inhospitable Gargano Mountains, death was stalking and had already claimed, not only Domenico, but other victims, and not just from the war. My students, Pio now thought, finally kneeling alone before the crucifix in the choir loft. What will happen to them?
Out of the fifteen boys who boarded and studied at the friary seminary under Pio’s guidance, at least two-thirds now suffered in the infirmary with the Spanish influenza which, according to the latest report from local San Giovanni Rotondo citizens, had reached the level of a worldwide pandemic, already having killed nearly a hundred townspeople as well as thousands in Italy alone. Two of Pio’s students had died at the beginning of the week.
This morning before Padre Pio celebrated Mass, he had checked on the remaining students suffering in the infirmary. Skeletons, he now thought. Just bones with skin stretched across. Many of the boys had complained to him that they couldn’t sleep, and most couldn’t retain any food. Chills, fevers, headaches, weakness, endless coughing; the students had it all. Just the pitiful sight of their suffering had caused his own lungs to spasm and to echo the coughing of the boys.
Now alone in the friary choir loft, trying to make his usual after-Mass thanksgiving, all thirty-one-year-old Pio could think about were his sick students and the ungodly World War that daily threatened to strike the friary and the nearest town, San Giovanni Rotondo, less than two miles away. With bombs having already fallen on Foggia, twenty-five miles away, the citizens of San Giovanni daily begged Padre Pio to ask God to spare their homes and town from the ravages of the war. The twin specters of war and influenza now churned inside Pio’s head, preventing him from making his thanksgiving. Letting his shoulders sag in a sigh beneath his long brown Franciscan habit, Pio glanced overhead at the larger-than-life mural of St. Michael the Archangel. Italy could use some angelic protection right about now, he thought, wondering what it would take to vanquish the epidemic.
Pio glanced up at the meter-high cypress crucifix. Where are you, Lord? So often these days God seemed to be hiding from Pio. Are the influenza and war Your punishments for the sins of mercenary governments only concerned about political, military, and financial gain? No! Hadn’t he just told Maria that God does not will suffering, death, pain, and war? Pio shook his head, trying to rid it of the gruesome images of brutality and death, then re-focused his attention on the lifelike crucified corpus before him, with the intention of performing his customary thanksgiving. But within seconds his thoughts strayed again. Maybe the governments do need purging by the pandemic and war; but my students? Young boys; totally innocent. “Where are You, Lord? We need You.” Pio’s complaint punctuated the other-wise silent church whose thick, ancient walls had heard hundreds of thousands of pleas throughout the centuries.
When the expected silence answered him, Pio forced his mind on the crucifix, on Christ’s own passion and death on the cross. Gazing at the realistic blood oozing from the wounds of the corpus before him, Pio appreciated anew the Savior’s sacrifice. The young priest lovingly studied the graphic bulge of the muscles and ribs, the sacred face contorted in agony, the iron spikes piercing the hands and feet of the corpus, and the figure’s arms and legs carved to appear disjointed as they must have been as gravity pulled apart the Savior’s joints. Such pain suffered for us, thought Pio. For me. Unworthy sinner. How could the Creator of the universe sacrifice so much for one young priest—for all sinners like him?
Oh Jesus, an eternity of thanksgivings would not be enough. Let me join You on the cross today—forever. Unite me to Yourself and use me to continue Your suffering here on earth for the salvation of souls. When Mary appeared to three shepherd children at Fatima, she asked all people for sacrifices; sacrifices offered up to God as prayers for humanity. Unworthy though I am, I offer myself now to You, Jesus, as a victim. A victim sharing in Your sufferings for the end of the pandemic, the end of the war, the salvation of all.
Only silence answered Pio’s offer. Undaunted, he spiritually abandoned himself into God’s embrace and continued to contemplate the corpus whose tears threatened to spill from its lifelike eyes and whose dramatic expression seemed to beg Pio to share in its sufferings. Yet a palpable peace began to spread throughout the young priest’s mind, body, and soul, and a smile budded on his lips. And as if in answer to Pio’s plea for God to accept him as a victim, a mysterious Being suddenly appeared hovering where the crucifix had stood just seconds ago. As Padre Pio stared at the blood dripping from the Being’s hands, feet, and side, terror replaced the peace he had experienced only moments ago. As if frozen by a blast of icy mountain air, Pio stared at the celestial person who held a long weapon whose bladed tip spewed fire. Barely able to breathe, Pio steeled himself for what he assumed would follow: his death.
Nearly paralyzed by fear, the young priest stared in horror as arrows of light burst from the mysterious Being and pierced Pio’s hands, feet, and side. Pain ripped through him, forcing him to collapse onto the floor of the choir loft. What’s happening to me? Shuddering, he glanced up at the Being from whom had emanated the arrows of light. Will he attack me again? But the apparition disappeared, leaving Pio alone to groan in anguish. Lifting one of his throbbing hands, he stared in horror at the blood oozing from the fresh wound in the middle of his palm. Was the other hand bleeding? Feet and side too? Just before losing consciousness from the pain, he muttered the last words of his crucified Lord, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
_________________________________________________________________
♪♪♪♪Here is some publishing news about the author so that you can know her better:
Nonfiction Saints Books by Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti:
Published by Our Sunday Visitor—Padre Pio's Words of Hope and Praying In the Presence of Our Lord with St. Padre Pio and Praying the Psalms with St. Padre Pio (www.osv.com)
Published by Pauline Books & Media—Saint Pio of Pietrelcina: Rich In Love (www.pauline.org)
Published by The Word Among Us Press—Praying with Padre Pio and Praying with Faustina (http://wau.org)
Published by Hard Shell Word Factory—Poor Pio, a picture book for children, and two Christian historical novels, Katie’s Song and Katie’s Tomorrows (www.hardshell.com)
Another Nonfiction Book by Eileen:
Published by Chelsea House Publishers—Molly Pitcher (www.chelseahouse.com)
Fiction Books by Eileen:
Published by Hard Shell Word Factory—two Christian historical novels, Katie’s Song and Katie’s Tomorrows (www.hardshell.com)
Published Online at Facebook and Blogger.com: Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
Also see Eileen’s Website: www.kcnet.org/~edbertan
Also see Eileen’s Blog: www.eileendunnbertanzetti.blogspot.com
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