Chapter 8
1919–1927
San Giovania Rotondo, Italy
“Why are they doing this to me?” Padre Pio wrote in a letter to Padre Agostino one night that November. “I’ve done nothing to Archbishop Gagliardi—or to Rome.” Thinking about the lies Gagliardi was promoting to the Vatican about him threw the Padre into coughing spasms as he sat alone at the small desk in his cell.
The following week, Padre Agostino’s letter of reply brought Pio momentary consolation: “The archbishop is jealous of you, my son,” Pio read. “He is a vile man, unworthy of the priesthood. One day his lies about you will come to light, and you will be exonerated. I have heard from trustworthy sources that the archbishop is hiding unspeakable sins concerning himself and a woman. Yes, my son, he is jealous of your sanctity. He is jealous of the crowds your gifts from God attract to your friary and church—to you, my son—and away from his own church and from the secular priests who serve under him. One day our Lord will reveal the truth. In the meantime, remember what our beloved St. Paul said about the willingness to suffer tribulation, distress, and persecution: ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.’ May our sweet Jesus comfort you in your trials, my son, and grant you the grace of perseverance. I bless you from afar, in Jesus Christ, Padre Agostino, Capuchin.”
During the next four years, though the flow of pilgrims to the mountain friary and Padre Pio never stopped, but only increased, the Lord did give Pio the “grace of perseverance” and sometimes even comforted him. One chilly afternoon at the end of September 1923, one of Pio’s fellow friars Padre Ignazio, who had recently been transferred to the friary from Cesena, marched toward Pio who had retreated to the friary garden for some quiet relaxation after fourteen straight hours of hearing confessions. Pio knew that many of the summer birds had by now migrated south, and hopefully the chickens would have gone to roost for the night, so his ears would get a rest even from God’s winged creatures.
While the late-afternoon autumn sun seemed to hover only inches above the garden wall, Ignazio, recently appointed as Father Guardian, stopped in front of Pio who had just sat down on one of the stone benches to admire the towering cypress. Pio knew that their leaves, overlapping like scales, would faithfully remain green even when the inevitable ice and snow of the coming winter assailed the mountain. So enrapt in meditating on the wonders of God’s creation, Pio did not notice the plump Ignazio until the newly assigned priest cleared his throat.
“Mi skusi, excuse me, Padre Pio,” said Ignazio in a gruff voice as he glowered at him. “I need to talk to you.”
Even though the new priest’s harsh voice ended Pio’s meditation, the latter smiled. “Certainly, Father Guardian. God bless you.” Ignazio was so short of stature, Pio only had to raise his head two inches to be able to look directly into the bespectacled eyes that peered at him above a pert nose and moustached lips.
“No one told me before I came here last week that I’d be facing chaos on a daily basis.” The anger in the priest’s voice twitched his bearded chin.
“Chaos?”
“Si, Padre, chaos.” Ignazio again cleared his throat and attempted to look taller than his not-quite-five-feet by straightening his back and staring down his pert nose at Pio. “The crowds of pilgrims deprive us of our free time. Some days we don’t even have time to eat our noon meal. And when we collapse on our beds late at night, we know we’ll only have to wake up at the crack of dawn the next day to the same heavy workload. The peasants’ mules have easier lives than we do! Just a bunch of cattivi, peccaminosi, e maligni; bad, sinful, and malicious people; that’s what we get here.”
Momentarily stunned by the priest’s caustic words, Pio glared at Ignazio as he growled, “Mi skusi, excuse me, Father Guardian, but you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Che? What?” came Ignazio’s startled reply.
“At other churches around the world preachers would praise God to have such crowds of people flocking to them to hear the Word of God, make their confessions, and receive Jesus in Holy Communion.”
“Well. . . .”
Frowning, Pio interrupted him: “With all due respect, Father Guardian, parlo io, I will do the talking. We need to work diligently for the Lord and thank Him for allowing us to work for the salvation of souls. Let our faithful work give Him glory!” A gentle smile returned to the Padre’s lips as he softly added, “Go now, my Father, and enjoy the evening before the dawn arrives and the Lord once again sends you out into that ‘field ripe for harvest’ Jesus spoke about.”
But as one hectic day led into the next, at times Padre Pio, too, was tempted to ask the Lord for a rest from his relentless schedule of confessions, Masses, counseling, and listening to what seemed to be the whole world’s problems—from divorce to murder, from all types of illnesses to every anxiety known to humanity. But he would remind the Lord—and himself—of God’s promise Pio had memorized years ago in seminary: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure.”
One of God’s “ways” to help Padre Pio arrived on October 3, 1923, in the form of a thirty-five-year-old, wealthy-yet-humble American heiress Adelia Mary McAlphin Pyle. Able to fluently speak five languages, including Italian, Mary would one day minister to the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world who journeyed up the rocky mountain to see Padre Pio.
On that unusually sunny, warm October day, the tall, slim young Mary Pyle, dressed in a cypress-green, ankle-length dress made of the finest linen, knelt before Padre Pio as he stood in the church hallway in the middle of the usual crowd of pilgrims who waited after his Masses to ask for his prayers and blessing. He would always graciously acquiesce and assure them with, “Basta pregare—prayer is enough.”
When the fair-skinned Mary, her long hair pinned elegantly atop her head, silently gazed up at Pio, he saw in her blue eyes the yearning for holiness that he had already read in her heart.
“Padre,” Mary began, “I have heard you are Il Monaco, the Holy Friar. I . . . I,” Mary tried to continue, but her sparkling eyes suddenly clouded and she burst out crying.
Only one year her senior, the priest gently asked, “What’s the matter, nenne, little one?”
Gazing up at him through her tears, Mary said, “I . . . I’m not a Catholic, Padre, but I’d like to become one.”
He smiled at her. “No one is stopping you, are they?”
Her lips echoed his smile when she said, “No.”
“Splendido! Wonderful!” He pulled a little catechism from his habit pocket and handed it to her. “Study this, my child.”
“Si, Padre.” Her blue eyes sparkled up at him once again. “I’ll do that and take instructions and. . . .”
Barely noticing the murmurings of the impatient pilgrims hovering around them, waiting for their chance to speak with the now-famous stigmatic, Pio assured Mary, “Only one thing is necessary, my child: to love God.”
With fresh tears welling up in her eyes, Mary humbly asked, “Would you be my spiritual father?” She bowed her head.
Placing his wounded, gloved hand on her head, he said, “Yes, my daughter, but it’s necessary that you move here.”
Shock registered in Mary’s eyes. “But Padre, I work for the famous educator Dr. Montessori, assisting her in her travels all over the world. I . . .”
“Parlo io, I will do the talking, nenne.” He speeded up his words as the crowd grew more impatient around them. “Dr. Montessori will do just fine without you, my daughter.”
“You are sure, Padre?” Mary sniffed back new tears that threatened to fall.
“Know, my child, that Jesus wants this sacrifice from you so that you can grow in holiness and serve His people here.” With a smile of encouragement and a wave of his aching hand, Pio added, “Go now, and when you return to San Giovanni—which will put an end to all your traveling—you will build a house here and use your talents, including your ability to speak five languages, to minister to the hundreds of thousands of poor souls from around the world who will come here. They will lovingly call you Maria l’Americana, Mary the American.”
Smoothing out the long linen skirt of her dress as she stood up, she asked with puzzlement creasing her fair complexion, “But how do you know all that?”
Pio merely smiled at her and, in spite of the pain it would cause, allowed her to kiss his stigmatized hand. “Va; sei in grazia di Dio! Go; you are in the grace of God.”
Only months later, Mary returned to Our Lady of Grace church and her spiritual father and again knelt before him in the hallway after his 5 a.m. Mass. Glancing at her expensive clothing and jewelry, he said, “These things are no longer for you, my daughter.”
“Si, Padre, I will sell them and give the money to you to give to the poor who come here.” She stood up, yanked the gold watch from her delicate wrist, and handed it to him. “A sign of my promise.”
Weeks later, as a new Catholic, Mary again approached Pio after Mass and knelt before him. “I want to grow in holiness, Padre. Since you and your friars are Franciscan Capuchins, perhaps I should become a Franciscan Sister? ”
Without hesitation, he replied, “No, you will enroll in the Third Order of the Franciscans and I myself will help you achieve that goal.”
In late-summer of 1925, Pio helped Mary destroy every bridge between her soul and the world by investing her in the long brown habit like the one he and his confreres wore, although hers had no cowl. Her face radiated joy when Pio tied the traditional white cord around her waist, the cord from which hung a long rosary with a wooden crucifix.
In obedience to her spiritual father, Mary, always clad in her long, brown Franciscan habit, had overseen to completion, by 1927, the building of her new home, a fourteenth-century-style villa, barely one hundred yards downhill from Our Lady of Grace friary. Covered with rose-colored plaster and nestled among the silver-green olive trees whose leaves softly rustled in the early summer breezes, the villa’s arches and towers made it resemble a small castle. Because he could not walk far on his swollen wounded feet, Padre Pio had to ride an asino, a donkey to the villa in order to bless it. During the one- hundred-yard trek downhill to Mary’s home, the forty-year-old, stout Padre Vigilio led the donkey and protected the Padre from a group of overzealous pilgrims who tried to hamper their progress. Moments after Vigilio, known for his temper’s low boiling point, had successfully used his ample body to block their access to the famous priest and had ordered them to go away, Pio gently patted the donkey’s neck and chuckled. “Don’t be angry with them, Vigilio. They don’t know I’m just an inconsequential chutcho, a little donkey who merely does God’s bidding.”
Still scowling at the retreating pilgrims, Vigilio refused to allow Pio’s remarks to divert him from his assignment which was to guard the stigmatic—with his own life, if he had to.
A half-hour later on that warm, late-summer morning, after Pio had blessed Mary Pyle’s home, the garrulous and grateful hostess guided her two brown-garbed guests on a tour through every room. Padre Vigilio dutifully supported Pio at all times as the latter struggled to walk on his throbbing, always-bleeding feet. Among other beautiful features of the villa, Pio marveled at the views from Mary’s windows of the stands of almond and cypress trees, the Gulf of Manfredonia, and the expansive wheat fields.
Less than an hour later, as the two priests stood at the front door of Mary’s home, ready to return uphill to the friary and their heavy work schedules, Pio grasped her hand and prophesied in his most-solemn-yet-loving voice, “For the next forty-one years you will live here austerely, my daughter, in imitation of our seraphic father St. Francis of Assisi. During that time you will minister to thousands of pilgrims whom God will send to you. At the end of those years, at age eighty, you will die a holy death.” Continuing to speak from the knowledge God was communicating to his soul, Pio smiled as he added, “And five months later I will be laid to rest in my own tomb.”
Too startled to speak, Mary just stared at him, as did Padre Vigilio. Moments later, Mary cleared her throat, bowed her head, and muttered, “Si, Padre Pio, I know Jesus speaks through you. So be it, amen.”
After making the Sign of the Cross over Mary, Pio allowed Padre Vigilio to help him mount the donkey. Then Vigilio, the top of his prematurely balding head reflecting the late-summer sun’s rays, led the beast out the wrought-iron gate that guarded the stone wall of the courtyard in front of Mary’s home. No sooner had the two friars reached the friary, and Padre Vigilio had helped Pio to dismount, than crowds besieged them. Vigilio, his four-inch beard jiggling as he menacingly growled and gesticulated at any individual who tried to touch Pio, had to again act as bodyguard to get the Padre safely to the confessional so that Pio could begin the inevitably long, hot hours of hearing the sins of the world.
In the cooler temperatures of the next morning, after his 5 a.m. Mass, and after his customary fifteen-minute thanksgiving, Padre Pio allowed Padre Vigilio to escort him into the hallway where a noisy crowd of about fifty adults and a handful of children waited for the stigmatic. As soon as the crowd spotted their “saint,” the noise transformed itself into a silence filled with an almost-palpable awe and reverence. Padre Pio spotted the wheelchair of a little girl at the front-edge of the crowd and hobbled toward her. Smiling, he drew a piece of hard candy from his pocket, handed it to her, and tenderly touched the top of her head. His eyes filled with tears; he glanced up at the girl’s poorly garbed mother whose scrawny, rough hands grasped the handles of the wheelchair; and he said, “Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Jesus will heal your daughter, and your husband will return to you.”
Staring in disbelief at Pio, her green eyes filling with tears, the mother choked out, “You will heal my daughter? But I didn’t even ask you yet. And how did you know my husband left us?” The frail young mother fell to her knees before the Padre, folded her hands, and said, “They are right about you; you really do read minds and heal people. And relationships. Thank you, Padre Pio. You are truly a saint.”
“No, my child,” he assured her, trying not to sound impatient, “I’m not a saint. And I deserve no thanks or praise. I’m just a poor friar who suffers and prays. Jesus is the Miracle Worker.” He glanced upward and then back at the woman. “Go now, my child; place your daughter before Jesus in the Tabernacle and give Him the gratitude and love He—and only He—deserves.”
For the next twenty minutes, with the red-cheeked, ever-wary Padre Vigilio guarding him, Padre Pio continued to minister to the crowd and freely hand out candy to the children and medals of Our Lady and St. Michael the Archangel to the adults.
By the time Vigilio helped Pio ease onto the hard seat of Pio’s confessional, the line of penitents already snaked down the length of the church, out the front door, and into the chill of the early morning. But none of that cool air reached Pio as he prepared himself for the hours of confessions he would hear. Feeling almost overwhelmed by what the Lord expected of him, Pio prayed silently, Thank You, Jesus, for sending more and more poor souls up the mountain to confess; and thank You for using me to absolve them from their sins. But this morning, Padre Pio felt weaker than usual, both physically and spiritually. How could God ever use him, so weak and sinful? Strengthen me, Lord, is all I ask. As usual, Pio steeled himself by recalling some of his favorite Scripture. He reminded himself what his favorite author St. Paul said, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” And then Pio reminded himself that when Paul, too, had complained to the Lord that he was powerless to accomplish anything of worth, Jesus told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” Finally grinning, Pio made Paul’s reply to the Lord his own: “I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
With only an occasional short break to take care of his body’s most-urgent needs, Padre Pio continued to hear confessions, refusing to even join his confreres in the refectory for the noon meal, although when he pictured briefly his brothers in the refectory, he had to grin. He visualized them sitting in rows at the long tables, their beards of various colors and lengths bobbing up and down as they ate. The Lord had taken Pio at his word and strengthened him, working His own powerful, loving will through the stigmatic. But by the time the late-afternoon sun made the already dim light in his confessional dimmer, mental, spiritual, and physical fatigue had gradually overtaken Pio. Shame washed over him as he finally admitted to himself, and to God, his exhaustion, his growing impatience with penitents, and his almost-desperate desire to escape the claustrophobic confines of the confessional. Now, as he leaned against the thin wall of the confessional and closed his eyes, steeling himself for the next penitent, he heard, instead of another confession, the loud, sharp voice of Padre Vigilio who had come to escort Pio to his cell for a brief rest before supper in the refectory.
“All right,” said the tall, brown-robed Vigilio to the line of weary penitents outside Pio’s confessional. “Time to go to your homes or wherever you’re staying. Padre Pio needs rest and food.” Most of the penitents left the line and headed toward the front door or to the closest pew to rest and pray. To the few individuals who refused to budge, Vigilio forced them to leave with a few harsh words. “Fortza! Go!” And to one young man who glared in defiance at the bodyguard, Vigilio had to finally say, “Testardo, obstinate person! Go before I have to throw you out on your head!”
Knowing he needed a rest and yet feeling compassion for the poor souls who had come such a long way and had waited for hours just to confess to him, Pio gently scolded his bodyguard, “Eh, benedica, bless them, my son.”
With a grumble, Vigilio obeyed with a stiff Sign of the Cross over the remaining penitents.
After sighing in relief, Pio felt a stab of guilt because of the gladness he felt at being set free, until tomorrow, from the stuffy, hot confines of the confessional. Forgive me, Lord. Immediately the familiar silent voice of God reassured him in the depths of his soul, “Don’t worry, my son. In my divine humanity, even I cried out in pain on the cross, asking the Father why He had abandoned Me in my agony. But He never abandoned Me, my son, and I will never abandon you. Always share with Me your pain and fear, your weakness and complaints, as well as your joys. Do not be afraid; my love and mercy toward you—and toward all—are unfathomable.”
With renewed inner strength, Pio accepted Vigilio’s assistance after sitting for so long on the hard confessional seat. “Take your time, Padre Pio,” the stout friar tenderly said. “After all these hours your wounds are certainly going to make walking difficult, so lean on me.”
“Molte grazie, thank you very much, my son.” Pio grimaced as he placed his swollen, gloved hand on Vigilio’s strong shoulder and stood. Mi dispiace—I’m sorry.” The pain from his five wounds momentarily overwhelmed Pio and salty tears coursed their way through his beard and to his lips.
“Sorry?” Vigilio peered at Pio’s face wrinkled with weariness. “You’ve nothing to be sorry about, Padre.”
Though they hadn’t progressed more than ten feet toward the archway that would lead to his cell, a coughing spell overtook Pio and he had to halt, forcing his bulky companion to stop too. In the meantime, all the six-foot, ample-figured Vigilio had to do was to glare at any loitering penitent who seemed to want to approach Padre Pio, and the individual would slink silently into the nearest pew.
After what seemed like an hour but could only have been a minute, the coughing ceased. “Now, Padre Pio, please tell me what in the world you have to be sorry about.”
“So much, my son, so much,” Pio said, staring at his bodyguard. “But especially I’m sorry for the trouble the stigmata cause. Why doesn’t Jesus take away the visible wounds? Of course I want to continue to always suffer the pains of the wounds, but their visibility causes such trouble for you and for all the friars. Crowds, extra work, unwanted publicity, investigations, loss of solitude. Not only do hundreds of sincere penitents come here, but so too do maligni; malicious persons, thieves, swindlers, and people drawn merely by their own vulgar curiosity.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Vigilio said in an uncharacteristically soft tone. “I consider it an honor to work with you—and for you.” Then in his typically loud, sharp voice he added, “And whoever doesn’t feel the same way should be ashamed of himself!”
Padre Pio answered only with a weary sigh and silently indicated he was ready to continue toward the archway and his cell. In his mental and physical pain, he barely noticed that his ample-figured bodyguard was now steering him away from the archway and, instead, guiding him back toward the sacristy. Pio stifled a cough and in his sorrow added, “I appreciate your vote of confidence, my son, but it doesn’t change the fact that the increasing problems around here—which began September 20, 1918, to be exact—are my fault because the stigmata draw so much attention—attention that none of us needs. Jesus can do anything, so I beg you to ask Him to take away the visible stigmata and leave me only with the pain. I want to bear that pain always for poor souls, as His mother recommended at Fatima only a decade ago.”
After an unintelligible grumble, his bodyguard reluctantly agreed, “Naturalmente, of course, I will pray for you.”
“Grazie, thank you, my son. Basta pregare, prayer is enough.”
A few yards from the sacristy door, once again Pio halted, forcing Vigilio to stop beside him.
“Che fai, what’re you doing?” the bodyguard asked in a feigned innocent tone. “Having another coughing spell?”
Peering suspiciously up at his tall confrere, Pio asked, “Why are we returning to the sacristy? You were taking me to my cell so I could rest my ‘brother body,’ as St. Francis called it.”
Vigilio’s hazel eyes twinkled at the stigmatic. “Si, I was indeed, but I forgot something—uh, someone, I should say.”
Glancing up at the painting of the Mother of God above the altar, Pio muttered, “Mater Dei, ora pro nobis; Mother of God, pray for us. Pray for me, a weak sinner!”
Just before reaching the sacristy door, Vigilio brought the two of them to a halt and grinned at his famous fellow friar. His eyes still twinkling with mischief, Vigilio said, “Forgive me, Padre, but there was one person I could not keep away from you.”
Unable to restrain a sigh of disappointment which erupted from his exhausted and aching body, Pio stared silently at his confrere, afraid to speak for fear harsh words would snake their way out of him. After taking a deep breath, Pio finally said, “Andiamo; let’s go,” and hobbled unassisted into the sacristy to find a peasant woman facing away from them and obviously enrapt in silent contemplation before the three framed paintings that highlighted the mammoth eighteenth-century wooden wardrobe that dominated the poorly lit room. The top of the ancient wardrobe barely missed touching the top of the low-vault of the ceiling.
Having spent many hours of contemplation himself before those three paintings, Padre Pio could understand why the woman’s attention had riveted upon them. A lifetime would not be long enough to exhaust the food for meditation found in those three paintings. Though they were of little artistic value, Pio now had only to gaze at them to find his heart and soul raised up immediately to their subjects: the Crucifixion, the Sorrowful Mother, and Jesus Crowned with Thorns. He barely noticed Vigilio’s retreat from the sacristy or his suddenly soft voice as he whispered, “You don’t need my protection from this person, Padre Pio.”
His reverie interrupted by his bodyguard’s enigmatic parting words, Pio’s attention once again focused on the woman. Though he could only see her back, somehow the slim figure, dressed in white from the hem of her long skirt to the top of her bonnet, looked hauntingly familiar to Pio as he hobbled toward her. When he reached her, he hesitated to disrupt her contemplation, but his swollen and complaining feet made him realize he shouldn’t stay on them any longer than he had to. Gently he touched one of her bony stooped shoulders beneath her plain-but-spotless dress, causing her to jerk slightly.
As the woman turned her thin and heavily wrinkled face to him, the priest gasped. Hungrily he gazed at the thin colorless lips, the dark eyebrows knit into a troubled frown above intense, light-blue eyes. “Mammella; my sweet, my holy, my beautiful mother!” Ignoring the pain that radiated from his throbbing wounds, Pio pulled her into his arms and allowed his tears to fall shamelessly onto the sweet-smelling white peasant scarf that covered her dark hair.
“Mammella!” he whispered, choking on the word and holding her as if she might suddenly vanish if he let go.
______________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Chapter 7 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
PLACE ME ON THE CROSS
Chapter 7
From an open, screen-less third-floor window of the four-story, weary-looking house, a mother screamed, “Help my child!” She leaned so far out of the window and waved so frantically at him, Padre Pio feared for her safety.
“Stay back,” he shouted up at her.
“But my child, he’s not moving!” the mother shouted again at the brown-robed priest. She gesticulated wildly down at the wide patch of tall dead weeds standing near the front wall of the apartment building directly beneath her window. “He fell just seconds ago from this window!”
In the dim light of the chilly evening air, Pio spied the reason for the woman’s hysteria, and he raced toward the motionless form barely visible in the patch of weeds. “Jesus, Mary, Jesus, Mary,” he prayed as he closed the short distance between himself and the seemingly lifeless body of a little boy.
Between sobs, the child’s mother hollered down at her son, “I’m coming, Filippo; Mamma’s coming.” As the woman’s words reached Pio’s ears, an image of his beloved mother Giuseppa Forgione flashed through his mind. What if the panicked mother were Pio’s own mamma? And what if this helpless little boy were Pio’s brother Michael as a child? Even though these momentary painful thoughts stabbed the priest’s heart, he knew it didn’t matter who this mother and little boy were. To Pio, everyone was a child of God and of infinite value to the loving Creator, and therefore to the priest.
“My Jesus,” Padre Pio whispered as he fell to his knees before the motionless child. He bent over the boy’s pale-as-death face and listened for signs of breathing. The sound of weak, trembling, yet-steady breathing reassured Pio and caused a brief smile of relief to lift his beard. But his face one again scrunched with worry as he gently examined the little boy’s head and body to discern the extent of his injuries. When he found no bleeding wounds or blatant signs of broken bones, Pio sighed and finally allowed the tears to stream down his face, catching in his short, thick beard before reaching his pursed lips.
The mother banged open the front door of the farmhouse and dashed toward Pio who still knelt beside the motionless child. With eyes closed and hands folded in prayer, the priest didn’t even look up when the woman knelt at the feet of her little son.
Dropping to her knees beside the boy’s bare feet, she begged Pio, “Per favore, please help him. There’s no one else around, and the closest doctor is too far away. If my sweet Filippo dies, it’s all my fault for leaving that window open, and I’ll never forgive myself.” Fresh sobs erupted from her trembling, frail-looking frame.
“Here,” Padre Pio said gently to her as he handed her one of the extra rosaries he always kept in his pocket to give away to pilgrims who visited him at his friary. “Pray.”
“What?” the mother said, sounding incredulous. “I’ve got to do something for him; not pray.”
Padre Pio finally glanced up at her and smiled tenderly. “Prayer is doing something; the most important something.”
“But my little boy; what if he dies?”
“He will not die,” Pio said, leaning once again over the boy’s pale face. The priest gently held the child’s head between his hands, prayed silently, and then struggled to a standing position. The wounds of Pio’s stigmatized feet ached from having remained so long in a cramped position, but he barely noticed the pain as he witnessed, along with the startled mother, the color returning to her boy’s face. Then the child weakly muttered his first word since his fall from the window, “Mamma.” As she eagerly reached out to him, he curled happily into her arms where she cradled him tightly against her breasts.
But before the woman could thank Padre Pio, he found himself once again lying on the thin mattress of his narrow bed in his cell at Our Lady of Grace. Exhausted, he stared up at the cracked ceiling through the dimming evening light filtering through his small window. “Thank You, Jesus, for using me,” he barely managed to mutter before falling asleep and into that merciful unconscious state in which his five always-bleeding wounds could not cause him pain.
“Padre Pio!” Someone was shaking his shoulders, forcing him to awaken from his deep, heavy sleep of exhaustion.
The pain jabbing at his hands, feet, and side cruelly reminded Pio of the stigmata as he squinted up at the emaciated, worry-creased face hovering over him. Spying the brown patch over the one eye that had been destroyed during the World War, Pio recognized his visitor and between gritted teeth muttered, “Padre Raffaele?”
“Si, yes,” said the thirty-seven-year-old priest, recently discharged from the Italian army and assigned to Our Lady of Grace. “You must get up, Padre Pio.” In a rush of words that stumbled over each other Raffaele continued, “You missed supper and you missed the Father Guardian reading the newspaper article to all of us and him getting really upset by it and everyone complaining about how the article will only cause more pilgrims to come here and cause more trouble for all of us and now the Father Guardian has no idea how we are going to deal with all of this and. . . .”
After pushing himself up from the hard mattress and into a sitting position on its edge, Padre Pio, now fully awake, interrupted the priest’s waves of words. “Wait, my son, slow down.” He smiled gently up at the perspiring face of his jittery confrere. “Per favore, please tell me everything while I try to stand up on these swollen feet of mine.”
Helping the stigmatized priest to his feet, Padre Raffaele, his thin frowning lips pursed above his short black beard and his dark eyes revealing intense worry and fear, said, “I’m not really supposed to tell you everything, Padre; the Father Guardian wants to question you, as do the others who are still waiting in the refectory. Please forgive me.”
“Don’t worry, my son,” Pio said, smiling tenderly at the sad face and drooping shoulders of Raffaele. “Sei in grazia di Dio! You are in the grace of God.”
But as Raffaele helped the Padre take the first few painful steps toward the cell door, Pio knew serious trouble was brewing for him in the mind of the Father Guardian. But I’ll trust Jesus, Mary, and my guardian angel, and no matter what trouble I’m in, I’ll accept it as due punishment for my wretchedness, and I’ll offer my suffering to Jesus for poor sinners.
After the five-minute walk to the refectory, with each of his steps punctuated by pain and coughing, Pio stepped through the doorway of the dining room—and into a caldron of tension that seemed to want to strangle his sensitive soul. Pray, hope, and don’t worry, he reminded himself as he had so often reminded the hundreds of troubled pilgrims who came to him for counsel and confession.
After someone in the refectory loudly hissed to all the friars, “Eccolo il Padre! There’s the Padre!” the excited chatter Pio had heard just before entering the refectory suddenly halted with his arrival. Only his occasional coughing as he hobbled to his assigned wooden chair punctuated the strained silence. Easing himself onto his chair, Pio glanced downward, hoping to avoid the rough material of his brown habit brushing against his side wound. Barely raising his head, he surreptitiously scanned the few dozen bearded faces of his confreres. Some he barely recognized because they had been so recently assigned to Our Lady of Grace to help with the influx of pilgrims and especially with the confessions of the women who outnumbered by the hundreds the male penitents. Now, to his dismay, Pio saw no smiles; just eyes filled with worry and even some faces creased with anger—seemingly directed at him.
Pio clutched the small rosary he held, silently said a Hail Mary, and sighed knowing whatever happened was in God’s hands. What he recently told one of his spiritual children he now reminded himself, “You see yourself to be abandoned, but I assure you that Jesus is holding you more tightly than ever to his divine Heart.”
The mountainous Father Guardian rose from his seat at the head of one of the long refectory tables next to the one at which Pio and a dozen other of his confreres sat. Scowling the Father motioned to Padre Anastasio to rise, then the Father again sat down. One of the Capuchin soldiers recently discharged from the Italian army and assigned to help at the friary, Anastasio refused to even glance at the stigmatized priest who sat on the opposite side of the table, only four chairs down. After clearing his throat, the bespectacled thirty-three-year-old Anastasio lifted a newspaper from the tabletop in front of him and said, “According to this article in Il Foglietto, a southern-Italian newspaper our Father Guardian received today from the Provincial, it says:
Miracle Friar Padre Pio of Our Lady of Grace friary will die at age thirty-three,
according to people who have visited him at the tiny remote church that can
barely hold two hundred people.
Che? What? thought Pio. Miracle friar? Die at thirty-three? I just turned thirty-two, for heaven’s sake. With greater conviction than ever, he vowed never to read a newspaper or even listen to a radio. If only it wouldn’t be cowardly and uncharitable to plug my ears while Anastasio reads! he thought. Sighing, he steeled himself for the rest of the article.
Padre Anastasio, the newspaper shaking along with his shaking hands, continued to read the reporter’s testimony:
"The Miracle Friar, right before my once-doubting eyes, healed a crippled young man who had traveled with his seven-year-old daughter all the way from their home in Naples to seek Padre Pio’s healing touch. But this time, Pio did not even have to come into physical contact with the young father who could only walk with the aid of crutches since he had returned from the war with a foot mangled from enemy fire. All Pio did was say to him, ‘Come on; walk.’ Then, strange as it sounds, Pio laughed confidently and grinned at the young man. The cripple dropped his crutches, but clutched at the wall next to him for support.
" ‘Come on; walk,’ Padre Pio repeated, still smiling at the cripple. And believe it or not, the young man walked, tears streaming down his now-grinning face! Yours truly, your humble reporter, tells you the truth; I saw it with my own eyes; the man walked without crutches down the one aisle of that tiny mountain church with his daughter trailing happily behind him, clapping her small hands with joy."
While I was at the friary, other pilgrims told me of miracles they had received from Pio, as well as some they had witnessed. This Miracle Friar, the priest who bears the five always-bleeding wounds of Christ crucified, has attracted during the year since he first received these ‘stigmata’ on the morning of September 20, 1918, thousands of pilgrims from Italy and now, since World War One ended November 11 of this year, from abroad as the soldiers return to their homes and spread the word about this Miracle Friar of San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy. The crowds believe that this Pio is a saint who has gifts from God such as prophecy, clairvoyance, bilocation (the ability to be in two places at the same time), perfume, healing, and of course the stigmata. As I wrote earlier, they also believe he will die at age thirty-three, only one year from now. This prediction, whether true or false, will no doubt draw even bigger crowds to Our Lady of Grace for what they deem the ‘last chance to see’ this Miracle Friar.
As soon as Padre Anastasio finished reading the article to the friars, he sank into his chair, still clutching the newspaper, and stared at the tabletop in front of him, without even a glance toward Padre Pio.
Pio sighed. He felt no animosity toward Anastasio with whom he had attended seminary not so long ago. Anastasio was only doing the duty given to him by the Father Guardian. Still, the article had caused sadness to darken Pio’s heart and mind, sadness which was further exacerbated by what followed from the taut lips and scowling face of the friary’s mountainous leader.
Glaring at Pio, the Guardian again stood up and in a voice that threatened to shake the windows of the refectory, said, “If it hasn’t already, that article will soon reach the Vatican, and that will mean bad news for us. More bad news, I should say, on top of what we’re already dealing with here!” Slumping into his chair that did not look sturdy enough to bear his massive frame, the Guardian suddenly looked defeated. “If anyone has any suggestions as to what we might do, please express them—now.” Turning his head toward Pio, he added in a much gentler tone and with the hint of a tender smile above his graying beard, “You, too, my son. I know you can’t control God who has surely been working His wonders through you and will more than likely continue to do so.”
The Guardian’s words helped to ease the pain in Padre Pio’s heart and to brighten the dark cloud that had invaded his mind. But during the next hour, as the evening sun sank below the friary wall, forcing Friar Mirabello to light the kerosene lamps at each table, Pio’s confreres tossed ideas back and forth on how to deal with the heavy crowds of pilgrims that were sure to increase once the unwanted publicity spread throughout the world.
While the priests and brothers debated what to do, Pio wondered about the prediction of his death one year from now. Perhaps, Lord, that would be best. Then my superiors and confreres would no longer have all the troubles that my presence here causes. But something in Pio’s spirit seemed to tell him that God would leave him here for many more years, contrary to Pio’s wishes. Perhaps, Lord, You would let me suffer the pains of the stigmata without allowing them to be visible? Certainly that would discourage the crowds. But Pio knew Jesus would not answer that wish either. Sighing, Pio recalled from Scripture:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says
the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the
earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. "
Now Pio again sighed, spiritually abandoning himself once again into the Heart of Jesus.
The next day the Father Guardian ordered Padre Basilio to write down directives to pass out to all the men under his care, including Padre Pio. Early that evening, alone in the choir loft, Padre Pio reluctantly pulled the sheet of paper containing those directives from his habit pocket. In the waning sunlight filtering through the one window, he read the directives and learned that he would no longer be allowed to appear in public without one of the friars acting as his bodyguard, because too many times fanatical women who carried scissors in their purses would snip off pieces of Pio’s brown habit to keep as relics. Perennially forgiving, Pio would refer to the women as “Le pie donna, the holy women,” but his confreres would growl behind his back and whisper to each other, “The Padre would be more accurate if he called them ‘the holy terrors’!”
“If the women are allowed to continue to do that,” said the directive, “our Padre will be left without a habit, and then the secular press will accuse us of condoning nudity! Since they have already accused us of making money off of Padre Pio by selling fake relics—pieces of material soaked in chicken blood—we must do everything we can to discourage the swindlers who wait like vultures outside the church to take advantage of unsuspecting pilgrims who want a relic to take home with them. A friar will have to monitor even the women of San Giovanni who launder our clothing. They have stolen some of the Padre’s night clothes to use as relics. They even steal his underwear!”
Oh my Jesus, Padre Pio now prayed silently, glancing up at the crucified corpus on the ancient wooden cross before which he had received the stigmata only a year ago. Such humiliation. But though I willingly bear everything for love of You, Jesus, why put my confreres to such trouble guarding a miserable sinner like me? They have better things to do, Lord.
With growing reluctance, Pio silently continued reading the directives from the Father Guardian. “With longer and longer lines of penitents waiting to confess their sins, I will need to ask the Provincial for more priests. And those of you who know more than one language, I will ask to take turns helping to sort and answer the increasing rain of correspondence sent to Padre Pio.”
Oh Lord, all this trouble I’m causing my brothers. Forgive me, Jesus. Tears threatened to spill from Pio’s eyes as he continued reading, “Pickpockets and other malicious persons have plagued the pilgrims and have sometimes infiltrated the church, even stealing Padre Pio’s breviary. To halt the thievery, I have asked for police from San Giovanni Rotondo to guard the church and cut down on crime. The press has accused the Padre of dousing himself with perfume so that his bleeding stigmata would give off their characteristic aroma of flowers. Newspapers have turned Pio’s spiritual gifts—like his gift of perfume, the ‘aroma of sanctity’ as it has been known throughout the centuries—into scandals. And since we cannot control the press, we must try to combat the rumors and lies with the truth. With that in mind, I have asked Padre Damaso to draft a letter to Rome that refutes the falsehoods. And since Our Lord Jesus Christ is The Truth, all of us can, as always, pray!”
Pray? Tears he could no longer restrain spilled over Padre Pio’s cheeks and disappeared into his beard. Oh Lord, make my whole life a prayer to You! Gazing at the realistic blood oozing from the wounds of the corpus before him, Pio—his heart aching for his fellow friars who had to make further sacrifices of time, solitude, and contemplation because of his presence which daily drew an increase of pilgrims to the once-peaceful mountain friary—appreciated anew the Savior’s sacrifice. Place me on the cross with You, Jesus, so that I may suffer for the salvation of poor souls—including those of my confreres and the pilgrims that besiege them. Yes, let me suffer for them as Your Mother requested at Fatima only two years ago.
Later that night, while everyone else slept, Padre Pio sat on his cell’s hard wooden chair at his small desk. Pulling his brown shawl closer to his neck to keep out the chill of the late summer night, he wrote a letter to one of his spiritual daughters who had written asking for his counsel. As he wrote, he knew he was giving himself advice as well as the woman: “When you feel oppressed by temptation, the means to oblige God to come to your aid is through humility of spirit, contrition of heart, and confident prayer. It is impossible for God to be displeased with this demonstration; impossible for Him not to come to your aid and give in. It is true that God’s power triumphs over everything; but humble and suffering prayer triumphs over God Himself! It lowers His arm, extinguishes His lightning, disarms Him, overcomes Him, appeases Him, and makes Him, I would almost say, a friend and dependent.”
By the end of that long, hot summer, in spite of Padre Pio’s prayers and the lack of hotels in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, the influx of pilgrims had grown to overwhelming proportions. When Pio peered out his cell window at night, he could see the glow of lanterns marking where people of all ages had bedded down in the fields to await the dawn and Pio’s 5 a.m. Mass. His confreres complained to him that hundreds of farmers neglected their crops so they could spend up to a week waiting to confess to Pio, their “saint.” In fact, the number of penitents who flocked to Padre Pio’s confessional kept him glued to his hard wooden seat in the hot, stuffy confines of the confessional booth, sometimes for fourteen hours a day. “I don’t mind,” he would always say when his fellow friars told him to lighten his workload and give his aching body a rest. “Jesus suffered and died for us. If He chooses to use me, a miserable sinner, to save souls, so be it.”
But by the time the autumn winds began to swirl around the mountain friary, bringing with them an even greater influx of pilgrims, the situation became so critical, news of the troubles at the friary precipitated harsh criticism from church authorities, including the local Archbishop Gagliardi, who then sent scathing accusations about Padre Pio and his friars to Rome!
______________________________________________________________________
Chapter 7
From an open, screen-less third-floor window of the four-story, weary-looking house, a mother screamed, “Help my child!” She leaned so far out of the window and waved so frantically at him, Padre Pio feared for her safety.
“Stay back,” he shouted up at her.
“But my child, he’s not moving!” the mother shouted again at the brown-robed priest. She gesticulated wildly down at the wide patch of tall dead weeds standing near the front wall of the apartment building directly beneath her window. “He fell just seconds ago from this window!”
In the dim light of the chilly evening air, Pio spied the reason for the woman’s hysteria, and he raced toward the motionless form barely visible in the patch of weeds. “Jesus, Mary, Jesus, Mary,” he prayed as he closed the short distance between himself and the seemingly lifeless body of a little boy.
Between sobs, the child’s mother hollered down at her son, “I’m coming, Filippo; Mamma’s coming.” As the woman’s words reached Pio’s ears, an image of his beloved mother Giuseppa Forgione flashed through his mind. What if the panicked mother were Pio’s own mamma? And what if this helpless little boy were Pio’s brother Michael as a child? Even though these momentary painful thoughts stabbed the priest’s heart, he knew it didn’t matter who this mother and little boy were. To Pio, everyone was a child of God and of infinite value to the loving Creator, and therefore to the priest.
“My Jesus,” Padre Pio whispered as he fell to his knees before the motionless child. He bent over the boy’s pale-as-death face and listened for signs of breathing. The sound of weak, trembling, yet-steady breathing reassured Pio and caused a brief smile of relief to lift his beard. But his face one again scrunched with worry as he gently examined the little boy’s head and body to discern the extent of his injuries. When he found no bleeding wounds or blatant signs of broken bones, Pio sighed and finally allowed the tears to stream down his face, catching in his short, thick beard before reaching his pursed lips.
The mother banged open the front door of the farmhouse and dashed toward Pio who still knelt beside the motionless child. With eyes closed and hands folded in prayer, the priest didn’t even look up when the woman knelt at the feet of her little son.
Dropping to her knees beside the boy’s bare feet, she begged Pio, “Per favore, please help him. There’s no one else around, and the closest doctor is too far away. If my sweet Filippo dies, it’s all my fault for leaving that window open, and I’ll never forgive myself.” Fresh sobs erupted from her trembling, frail-looking frame.
“Here,” Padre Pio said gently to her as he handed her one of the extra rosaries he always kept in his pocket to give away to pilgrims who visited him at his friary. “Pray.”
“What?” the mother said, sounding incredulous. “I’ve got to do something for him; not pray.”
Padre Pio finally glanced up at her and smiled tenderly. “Prayer is doing something; the most important something.”
“But my little boy; what if he dies?”
“He will not die,” Pio said, leaning once again over the boy’s pale face. The priest gently held the child’s head between his hands, prayed silently, and then struggled to a standing position. The wounds of Pio’s stigmatized feet ached from having remained so long in a cramped position, but he barely noticed the pain as he witnessed, along with the startled mother, the color returning to her boy’s face. Then the child weakly muttered his first word since his fall from the window, “Mamma.” As she eagerly reached out to him, he curled happily into her arms where she cradled him tightly against her breasts.
But before the woman could thank Padre Pio, he found himself once again lying on the thin mattress of his narrow bed in his cell at Our Lady of Grace. Exhausted, he stared up at the cracked ceiling through the dimming evening light filtering through his small window. “Thank You, Jesus, for using me,” he barely managed to mutter before falling asleep and into that merciful unconscious state in which his five always-bleeding wounds could not cause him pain.
“Padre Pio!” Someone was shaking his shoulders, forcing him to awaken from his deep, heavy sleep of exhaustion.
The pain jabbing at his hands, feet, and side cruelly reminded Pio of the stigmata as he squinted up at the emaciated, worry-creased face hovering over him. Spying the brown patch over the one eye that had been destroyed during the World War, Pio recognized his visitor and between gritted teeth muttered, “Padre Raffaele?”
“Si, yes,” said the thirty-seven-year-old priest, recently discharged from the Italian army and assigned to Our Lady of Grace. “You must get up, Padre Pio.” In a rush of words that stumbled over each other Raffaele continued, “You missed supper and you missed the Father Guardian reading the newspaper article to all of us and him getting really upset by it and everyone complaining about how the article will only cause more pilgrims to come here and cause more trouble for all of us and now the Father Guardian has no idea how we are going to deal with all of this and. . . .”
After pushing himself up from the hard mattress and into a sitting position on its edge, Padre Pio, now fully awake, interrupted the priest’s waves of words. “Wait, my son, slow down.” He smiled gently up at the perspiring face of his jittery confrere. “Per favore, please tell me everything while I try to stand up on these swollen feet of mine.”
Helping the stigmatized priest to his feet, Padre Raffaele, his thin frowning lips pursed above his short black beard and his dark eyes revealing intense worry and fear, said, “I’m not really supposed to tell you everything, Padre; the Father Guardian wants to question you, as do the others who are still waiting in the refectory. Please forgive me.”
“Don’t worry, my son,” Pio said, smiling tenderly at the sad face and drooping shoulders of Raffaele. “Sei in grazia di Dio! You are in the grace of God.”
But as Raffaele helped the Padre take the first few painful steps toward the cell door, Pio knew serious trouble was brewing for him in the mind of the Father Guardian. But I’ll trust Jesus, Mary, and my guardian angel, and no matter what trouble I’m in, I’ll accept it as due punishment for my wretchedness, and I’ll offer my suffering to Jesus for poor sinners.
After the five-minute walk to the refectory, with each of his steps punctuated by pain and coughing, Pio stepped through the doorway of the dining room—and into a caldron of tension that seemed to want to strangle his sensitive soul. Pray, hope, and don’t worry, he reminded himself as he had so often reminded the hundreds of troubled pilgrims who came to him for counsel and confession.
After someone in the refectory loudly hissed to all the friars, “Eccolo il Padre! There’s the Padre!” the excited chatter Pio had heard just before entering the refectory suddenly halted with his arrival. Only his occasional coughing as he hobbled to his assigned wooden chair punctuated the strained silence. Easing himself onto his chair, Pio glanced downward, hoping to avoid the rough material of his brown habit brushing against his side wound. Barely raising his head, he surreptitiously scanned the few dozen bearded faces of his confreres. Some he barely recognized because they had been so recently assigned to Our Lady of Grace to help with the influx of pilgrims and especially with the confessions of the women who outnumbered by the hundreds the male penitents. Now, to his dismay, Pio saw no smiles; just eyes filled with worry and even some faces creased with anger—seemingly directed at him.
Pio clutched the small rosary he held, silently said a Hail Mary, and sighed knowing whatever happened was in God’s hands. What he recently told one of his spiritual children he now reminded himself, “You see yourself to be abandoned, but I assure you that Jesus is holding you more tightly than ever to his divine Heart.”
The mountainous Father Guardian rose from his seat at the head of one of the long refectory tables next to the one at which Pio and a dozen other of his confreres sat. Scowling the Father motioned to Padre Anastasio to rise, then the Father again sat down. One of the Capuchin soldiers recently discharged from the Italian army and assigned to help at the friary, Anastasio refused to even glance at the stigmatized priest who sat on the opposite side of the table, only four chairs down. After clearing his throat, the bespectacled thirty-three-year-old Anastasio lifted a newspaper from the tabletop in front of him and said, “According to this article in Il Foglietto, a southern-Italian newspaper our Father Guardian received today from the Provincial, it says:
Miracle Friar Padre Pio of Our Lady of Grace friary will die at age thirty-three,
according to people who have visited him at the tiny remote church that can
barely hold two hundred people.
Che? What? thought Pio. Miracle friar? Die at thirty-three? I just turned thirty-two, for heaven’s sake. With greater conviction than ever, he vowed never to read a newspaper or even listen to a radio. If only it wouldn’t be cowardly and uncharitable to plug my ears while Anastasio reads! he thought. Sighing, he steeled himself for the rest of the article.
Padre Anastasio, the newspaper shaking along with his shaking hands, continued to read the reporter’s testimony:
"The Miracle Friar, right before my once-doubting eyes, healed a crippled young man who had traveled with his seven-year-old daughter all the way from their home in Naples to seek Padre Pio’s healing touch. But this time, Pio did not even have to come into physical contact with the young father who could only walk with the aid of crutches since he had returned from the war with a foot mangled from enemy fire. All Pio did was say to him, ‘Come on; walk.’ Then, strange as it sounds, Pio laughed confidently and grinned at the young man. The cripple dropped his crutches, but clutched at the wall next to him for support.
" ‘Come on; walk,’ Padre Pio repeated, still smiling at the cripple. And believe it or not, the young man walked, tears streaming down his now-grinning face! Yours truly, your humble reporter, tells you the truth; I saw it with my own eyes; the man walked without crutches down the one aisle of that tiny mountain church with his daughter trailing happily behind him, clapping her small hands with joy."
While I was at the friary, other pilgrims told me of miracles they had received from Pio, as well as some they had witnessed. This Miracle Friar, the priest who bears the five always-bleeding wounds of Christ crucified, has attracted during the year since he first received these ‘stigmata’ on the morning of September 20, 1918, thousands of pilgrims from Italy and now, since World War One ended November 11 of this year, from abroad as the soldiers return to their homes and spread the word about this Miracle Friar of San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy. The crowds believe that this Pio is a saint who has gifts from God such as prophecy, clairvoyance, bilocation (the ability to be in two places at the same time), perfume, healing, and of course the stigmata. As I wrote earlier, they also believe he will die at age thirty-three, only one year from now. This prediction, whether true or false, will no doubt draw even bigger crowds to Our Lady of Grace for what they deem the ‘last chance to see’ this Miracle Friar.
As soon as Padre Anastasio finished reading the article to the friars, he sank into his chair, still clutching the newspaper, and stared at the tabletop in front of him, without even a glance toward Padre Pio.
Pio sighed. He felt no animosity toward Anastasio with whom he had attended seminary not so long ago. Anastasio was only doing the duty given to him by the Father Guardian. Still, the article had caused sadness to darken Pio’s heart and mind, sadness which was further exacerbated by what followed from the taut lips and scowling face of the friary’s mountainous leader.
Glaring at Pio, the Guardian again stood up and in a voice that threatened to shake the windows of the refectory, said, “If it hasn’t already, that article will soon reach the Vatican, and that will mean bad news for us. More bad news, I should say, on top of what we’re already dealing with here!” Slumping into his chair that did not look sturdy enough to bear his massive frame, the Guardian suddenly looked defeated. “If anyone has any suggestions as to what we might do, please express them—now.” Turning his head toward Pio, he added in a much gentler tone and with the hint of a tender smile above his graying beard, “You, too, my son. I know you can’t control God who has surely been working His wonders through you and will more than likely continue to do so.”
The Guardian’s words helped to ease the pain in Padre Pio’s heart and to brighten the dark cloud that had invaded his mind. But during the next hour, as the evening sun sank below the friary wall, forcing Friar Mirabello to light the kerosene lamps at each table, Pio’s confreres tossed ideas back and forth on how to deal with the heavy crowds of pilgrims that were sure to increase once the unwanted publicity spread throughout the world.
While the priests and brothers debated what to do, Pio wondered about the prediction of his death one year from now. Perhaps, Lord, that would be best. Then my superiors and confreres would no longer have all the troubles that my presence here causes. But something in Pio’s spirit seemed to tell him that God would leave him here for many more years, contrary to Pio’s wishes. Perhaps, Lord, You would let me suffer the pains of the stigmata without allowing them to be visible? Certainly that would discourage the crowds. But Pio knew Jesus would not answer that wish either. Sighing, Pio recalled from Scripture:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says
the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the
earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. "
Now Pio again sighed, spiritually abandoning himself once again into the Heart of Jesus.
The next day the Father Guardian ordered Padre Basilio to write down directives to pass out to all the men under his care, including Padre Pio. Early that evening, alone in the choir loft, Padre Pio reluctantly pulled the sheet of paper containing those directives from his habit pocket. In the waning sunlight filtering through the one window, he read the directives and learned that he would no longer be allowed to appear in public without one of the friars acting as his bodyguard, because too many times fanatical women who carried scissors in their purses would snip off pieces of Pio’s brown habit to keep as relics. Perennially forgiving, Pio would refer to the women as “Le pie donna, the holy women,” but his confreres would growl behind his back and whisper to each other, “The Padre would be more accurate if he called them ‘the holy terrors’!”
“If the women are allowed to continue to do that,” said the directive, “our Padre will be left without a habit, and then the secular press will accuse us of condoning nudity! Since they have already accused us of making money off of Padre Pio by selling fake relics—pieces of material soaked in chicken blood—we must do everything we can to discourage the swindlers who wait like vultures outside the church to take advantage of unsuspecting pilgrims who want a relic to take home with them. A friar will have to monitor even the women of San Giovanni who launder our clothing. They have stolen some of the Padre’s night clothes to use as relics. They even steal his underwear!”
Oh my Jesus, Padre Pio now prayed silently, glancing up at the crucified corpus on the ancient wooden cross before which he had received the stigmata only a year ago. Such humiliation. But though I willingly bear everything for love of You, Jesus, why put my confreres to such trouble guarding a miserable sinner like me? They have better things to do, Lord.
With growing reluctance, Pio silently continued reading the directives from the Father Guardian. “With longer and longer lines of penitents waiting to confess their sins, I will need to ask the Provincial for more priests. And those of you who know more than one language, I will ask to take turns helping to sort and answer the increasing rain of correspondence sent to Padre Pio.”
Oh Lord, all this trouble I’m causing my brothers. Forgive me, Jesus. Tears threatened to spill from Pio’s eyes as he continued reading, “Pickpockets and other malicious persons have plagued the pilgrims and have sometimes infiltrated the church, even stealing Padre Pio’s breviary. To halt the thievery, I have asked for police from San Giovanni Rotondo to guard the church and cut down on crime. The press has accused the Padre of dousing himself with perfume so that his bleeding stigmata would give off their characteristic aroma of flowers. Newspapers have turned Pio’s spiritual gifts—like his gift of perfume, the ‘aroma of sanctity’ as it has been known throughout the centuries—into scandals. And since we cannot control the press, we must try to combat the rumors and lies with the truth. With that in mind, I have asked Padre Damaso to draft a letter to Rome that refutes the falsehoods. And since Our Lord Jesus Christ is The Truth, all of us can, as always, pray!”
Pray? Tears he could no longer restrain spilled over Padre Pio’s cheeks and disappeared into his beard. Oh Lord, make my whole life a prayer to You! Gazing at the realistic blood oozing from the wounds of the corpus before him, Pio—his heart aching for his fellow friars who had to make further sacrifices of time, solitude, and contemplation because of his presence which daily drew an increase of pilgrims to the once-peaceful mountain friary—appreciated anew the Savior’s sacrifice. Place me on the cross with You, Jesus, so that I may suffer for the salvation of poor souls—including those of my confreres and the pilgrims that besiege them. Yes, let me suffer for them as Your Mother requested at Fatima only two years ago.
Later that night, while everyone else slept, Padre Pio sat on his cell’s hard wooden chair at his small desk. Pulling his brown shawl closer to his neck to keep out the chill of the late summer night, he wrote a letter to one of his spiritual daughters who had written asking for his counsel. As he wrote, he knew he was giving himself advice as well as the woman: “When you feel oppressed by temptation, the means to oblige God to come to your aid is through humility of spirit, contrition of heart, and confident prayer. It is impossible for God to be displeased with this demonstration; impossible for Him not to come to your aid and give in. It is true that God’s power triumphs over everything; but humble and suffering prayer triumphs over God Himself! It lowers His arm, extinguishes His lightning, disarms Him, overcomes Him, appeases Him, and makes Him, I would almost say, a friend and dependent.”
By the end of that long, hot summer, in spite of Padre Pio’s prayers and the lack of hotels in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, the influx of pilgrims had grown to overwhelming proportions. When Pio peered out his cell window at night, he could see the glow of lanterns marking where people of all ages had bedded down in the fields to await the dawn and Pio’s 5 a.m. Mass. His confreres complained to him that hundreds of farmers neglected their crops so they could spend up to a week waiting to confess to Pio, their “saint.” In fact, the number of penitents who flocked to Padre Pio’s confessional kept him glued to his hard wooden seat in the hot, stuffy confines of the confessional booth, sometimes for fourteen hours a day. “I don’t mind,” he would always say when his fellow friars told him to lighten his workload and give his aching body a rest. “Jesus suffered and died for us. If He chooses to use me, a miserable sinner, to save souls, so be it.”
But by the time the autumn winds began to swirl around the mountain friary, bringing with them an even greater influx of pilgrims, the situation became so critical, news of the troubles at the friary precipitated harsh criticism from church authorities, including the local Archbishop Gagliardi, who then sent scathing accusations about Padre Pio and his friars to Rome!
______________________________________________________________________
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Chapter 6 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
Chapter 6
Summer 1919
At the beginning of this hot early summer afternoon, choosing to pray his Rosary in the choir loft rather than join his fellow friars for the noon meal in the refectory, Padre Pio first glanced out the window overlooking the sagrato, the square or courtyard. Carefully staying out of their view, he studied the more than two dozen pilgrims who sat beneath the generous shade of the aged elm tree eating the meager lunches they had brought. He knew they waited for him to begin confessions. Feeling almost overwhelmed by what the Lord expected of him, Pio prayed silently, Of course I thank You, Jesus, for sending so many poor souls—more and more every day, in fact—up the mountain to confess, and I also thank You for using me to absolve them from their sins. But dear God, why didn’t You take away the visible stigmata You gave me, the visible wounds? I do want to suffer the pains of the wounds, but do you see what trouble their visibility causes the other friars? The crowds, the extra work, the loss of solitude.
Pio turned toward the crucifix before which he had received the stigmata and said, “Perche? Why? Why not allow me to continue to suffer the pains of the stigmata, but at the same time make them invisible? You can do anything, Jesus. Why not do that?” Pio held a wounded and gloved palm out to the realistic, pastel-yellow, crucified corpus. Knowing that arguing with God would accomplish nothing, Pio nevertheless continued in an accusing tone, “And now, because You’ve allowed word of the stigmata to spread only-You-know-how-far, what Padre Benedetto feared would happen has indeed happened. Not only do the sincere penitents come here, but so too do maligni, malicious persons, thieves, swindlers, and people drawn merely by their own vulgar curiosity.” As if the Lord didn’t already see everything, Pio nodded his head toward the scene in the square below. “Just look at those thieves down there selling as ‘relics’ pieces of rags stained with chicken blood. Somehow they manage to fool the poor pilgrims into believing it’s my blood from the stigmata. Every day pilgrims succumb to the schemes of swindlers like them who concoct all kinds of devious plans to steal their money.”
Now a single tear trickled down Pio’s cheek and into the dark mesh of his beard. “Mi dispiace, I’m sorry, Jesus,” he whispered, as if the crowd below might hear him. “Please forgive my complaining. I accept everything from Your loving hands for the salvation of souls.”
Later that afternoon during confessions, white-bearded Fra Guistino, gasping for breath as if he’d raced to Padre Pio’s confessional, poked his balding head inside, smiled meekly at the priest, and silently handed him a message. “Grazie, thank you,” Pio said, tucking it into the pocket of his habit. As Guistino quickly bowed his head in respect, turned, and marched toward the exit, Padre Pio continued listening to the penitent who had patiently waited, kneeling on the other side of the thin partition and small eye-level, dark-screened door that hid her from him.
When the woman had finished iterating her list of sins, she waited silently for a penance and absolution from Padre Pio, but must have been shocked when he asked her in his sternest voice, “And what do you plan to do about the money you stole from your employer?”
“Che? What?” she asked in a hoarse cry of surprise. “Che cosa ha ditto? What did you say?”
In spite of her apparent incredulity, Padre Pio refused to retract his question, knowing that the Lord had revealed the woman’s un-confessed and greatest sin to him. “You heard me,” Pio growled, “the stolen money. What do you plan to do about it?” He could hear her sobbing now, but he refused to ease up on her. I know You’ll call me to account, Jesus, on the Day of Judgment, if I don’t look after the wellbeing of her eternal soul. “Since you don’t want to tell me what you should do about that money,” Pio growled, “I will tell you!” In a harsh voice pitched low enough so that the other penitents in the small friary church couldn’t hear, Pio ordered the woman to go home to Foggia, return the money to her employer, and then make a thorough confession to her local parish priest.
“But, Padre, I can’t return the money,” she said, choking on her tears.
“That’s right; you can’t because you’ve already spent it. Che sciocca! What a fool!” Pio sadly shook his head. After coughing into his gloved hand and clearing his throat which felt parched from the hours of counseling he’d already done that morning and hot afternoon in the stuffy confines of the confessional, he continued, “You can’t return the money, but you can offer to work off your debt.”
Almost in a whisper, the woman humbly said, “Si, Padre, I will do as you say.”
With a sigh of relief, Pio congratulated her with, “Splendido! For your penance, go and do as you have promised to the Lord and to me.” As he gave her absolution, he slowly and reverently made the Sign of the Cross in her direction with his pierced and bleeding hand. “Go in peace. Sei in grazia di Dio. You are in the grace of God.” Oh my Jesus, he added silently, if only I felt that peace in my own soul. But my constant companion is the fear of offending You. Oh my God, when will you relieve this torment? Heaven, as usual, gave him no answer, or at least none that he recognized.
Not until an hour later when Padre Pio gave absolution to the last penitent, did he hobble on swollen feet out of the dim light of the confessional and down the hallway to his cell where he read the message Fra Guistino had handed him. Sinking wearily onto the hard bed that waited for him like a faithful friend in his small cell, Pio left his fingerless gloves on as he opened the piece of paper on which someone had typed a message.
What Padre Pio read made his head ache as if with a migraine, and pain shot through his chest, forcing him to double over with coughing. Letting the paper fall to the floor, he let himself fall backward onto the hard, thin mattress, as if the words of the message had almost killed him. This can’t be, Jesus, he silently prayed as he stared at the cracked ceiling above him. It must be a joke; a terrible joke. But he knew it wasn’t. Haven’t my stigmata caused enough trouble already? With the dramatic growth of Pio’s ministry as the flood of pilgrims to Our Lady of Grace friary steadily increased since word about the stigmata had begun to spread after September of last year, had come doctors sent by the Provincial Padre Benedetto as well as by the Vatican to inspect Pio’s stigmata and to ask him a seemingly unending list of questions in regard to the wounds and his own general health, both mental and physical. Padre Pio had endured painful humiliations because of all of that, as well as because of rumors, criticisms, and accusations surrounding the stigmata. Even the secular priests down the mountain in San Giovanni are speaking out against me, Pio now thought.
His beloved spiritual directors Padres Benedetto and Agostino had assured Pio in their letters that the priests were just jealous because Pio’s growing fame attracted the secular priests’ parishioners up the mountain to Our Lady of Grace friary and away from their own parish priests. One of the parish priests Don Giovanni Miscio had even written to newspapers, to the Capuchin minister general, and to the Vatican, accusing Pio and his fellow friars of making money off the pilgrims. Sadness now threatened to overwhelm Pio as he recalled the ugly actions that had been taken against him and his fellow friars.
With tears now spilling down his cheeks and into the dark mesh of his beard, and in spite of the stabbing pain the movement of the coarse material of his habit caused his side wound, Pio sat up and read again the message from the Capuchin headquarters:
"Dear Padre Pio,
As you know, in spite of our orders to Padre Benedetto to not allow word of your
stigmata to leak to the public, an article about it recently appeared in the Naples
newspaper Mattino. The sensationalism caused by this unwanted publicity has
prompted us, during our most recent Chapter meeting, to elect Padre Pietro of
Ischitella to replace Benedetto as Provincial. Also, Benedetto will no longer act as
your spiritual director. We also voted to transfer the father guardian Padre Paolino
from Our Lady of Grace to the friary at Gesualdo. Your new father guardian will
be Padre Lorenzo of San Marco in Lamis. In addition, we have received word from
the Vatican saying the Holy Office has ordered a week-long medical examination
of you and the stigmata by Dr. Amico Bignami of the University of Rome. He is an
atheist, and so the Vatican believes he will give an unbiased evaluation."
With the words of the Chapter meeting letter clawing at his mind and heart, Pio stared upward through his tears at Christ crucified on the cross hanging above his bed. Why did You take away Padre Benedetto, one of my best friends and strongest supports? It wasn’t his fault that word about the stigmata leaked to the public. I don’t know whose fault it was, but it wasn’t his. You know very well, Lord, that he ordered complete secrecy. Padre Pio figured that Rome had blamed Benedetto and the Capuchins, and that the Capuchins, in turn, had used Benedetto as their scapegoat. If the truth were known, the seminarians who study here would’ve been enough to spread the word about the stigmata to all of Italy and even beyond.
Peering again at the letter he still held in his gloved hand, Pio’s inner pain grew to an almost-unbearable strength when he read, “We also voted to transfer the father guardian Padre Paolino.” The beloved Benedetto and Paolino, suddenly yanked from Padre Pio’s life! Why, Lord? Sighing, Pio now thought about having to soon endure another embarrassing, painful examination of the stigmata—this time for eight long days by a stranger, a Dr. Amico Bignami from Rome. Again, Lord, I ask You why? But Pio knew it would be useless to argue with God or with the Capuchin officials.
Padre Pio stared upward again at his crucified Lord on the cross hanging on the white-washed wall above his bed. Shame now shot through him when he contemplated Christ’s Passion. “I offered myself to You as a victim, Lord, and here I am complaining about my sufferings. Please forgive me. Let me join You on the cross; unite me to Yourself and use me to continue Your suffering here on earth for the salvation of souls.” Pio smiled as he remembered how the Mother of God, two years ago, had asked for sacrifices when she appeared to three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal. “Sacrifices, Lord,” Pio now said, shame once again piercing his heart and soul. “Your immaculate and virginal Mother asked everyone to offer up their sufferings, big or small, to God as prayers for humanity. Unworthy though I am, Jesus, I once again offer myself to You as a victim to share in Your sufferings for the salvation of all.” Pio knew this offering of himself would not take away the pain of losing his beloved friends Benedetto and Paolino, or the mental and physical pains the coming eight-day examination would cause him, but now he could offer genuine thanks for those opportunities to suffer for the benefit of others.
Spiritually abandoning himself to God, Pio continued to contemplate the pastel-yellow corpus whose dramatic expression seemed to beg him to share in Christ’s sufferings. Yet a palpable peace began to spread throughout the young priest’s mind, body, and soul, and a smile budded on his lips. Now enveloped in God’s loving embrace, Pio was able to forget, at least for the moment, the increasingly large numbers of pilgrims who traveled up the mountain to Our Lady of Grace friary and church to beg prayers and blessings from him, the now-famous stigmatic, and to confess to him. But out of those hundreds of visitors, only a handful of people, including his close friends Padres Paolino, Benedetto, and Agostino, knew that Padre Pio was traveling further and more frequently than any of the pilgrims—without ever leaving San Giovanni Rotondo!
Now, still contemplating Christ’s passion, Padre Pio was barely aware of the dimming light in his small cell as that summer evening’s sun disappeared behind the monastery’s garden wall outside his window. “Oh my Jesus,” he whispered up at the crucifix above his bed, “I am ready to do whatever You will for me. Use me, Lord, to help Your hurting people, because I know that You, in Your great love for them, feel their every pain.” As if in answer to Pio’s prayer, the Spirit of God, in an instant, mysteriously transported him to a location hundreds of miles away.
When Pio arrived at the unfamiliar location, he was aware, as was usual in these “travels” of his, that he had been bilocated, caused to be in two places at one time. But as usual, he wasn’t certain if God had transported his body or soul or both. Only last week Padre Paolino had received word from the Vatican that Padre Pio had been seen at a recent canonization in St. Peter’s Square, but Paolino had been with Pio during that exact time period, and so Paolino knew the stigmatic had never left the friary.
From Scripture and the biographical information Padre Pio had read about the saints, he knew that the Spirit of God had bilocated many believers before him, including America’s St. Mother Cabrini. The book of Acts in the Bible also assured Pio that God had bilocated people even in Jesus’ time, including Christ’s disciple Philip who, after baptizing the important eunuch, disappeared because “the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip” miles away to the city of Azotus.
Now on this sultry summer evening, without any effort on his part, Padre Pio had suddenly left the stuffiness of his small cell and had found himself in the front yard of an old, ramshackle farmhouse nestled in a valley along a narrow creek whose waters he could hear sloshing against the nearby rocky bank. Where am I? he wondered. The cool air wafting toward him from the creek made him shiver beneath his long brown habit. Scanning the yard, he could see no other persons, but only a lone platoon of pines standing at attention as if guarding the three dirty-white cows that huddled silently together beneath the bottom branches. Why am I here, Lord?
From the direction of the house a mother’s sudden shrill cry for help reached his ears, and he knew the “why.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Summer 1919
At the beginning of this hot early summer afternoon, choosing to pray his Rosary in the choir loft rather than join his fellow friars for the noon meal in the refectory, Padre Pio first glanced out the window overlooking the sagrato, the square or courtyard. Carefully staying out of their view, he studied the more than two dozen pilgrims who sat beneath the generous shade of the aged elm tree eating the meager lunches they had brought. He knew they waited for him to begin confessions. Feeling almost overwhelmed by what the Lord expected of him, Pio prayed silently, Of course I thank You, Jesus, for sending so many poor souls—more and more every day, in fact—up the mountain to confess, and I also thank You for using me to absolve them from their sins. But dear God, why didn’t You take away the visible stigmata You gave me, the visible wounds? I do want to suffer the pains of the wounds, but do you see what trouble their visibility causes the other friars? The crowds, the extra work, the loss of solitude.
Pio turned toward the crucifix before which he had received the stigmata and said, “Perche? Why? Why not allow me to continue to suffer the pains of the stigmata, but at the same time make them invisible? You can do anything, Jesus. Why not do that?” Pio held a wounded and gloved palm out to the realistic, pastel-yellow, crucified corpus. Knowing that arguing with God would accomplish nothing, Pio nevertheless continued in an accusing tone, “And now, because You’ve allowed word of the stigmata to spread only-You-know-how-far, what Padre Benedetto feared would happen has indeed happened. Not only do the sincere penitents come here, but so too do maligni, malicious persons, thieves, swindlers, and people drawn merely by their own vulgar curiosity.” As if the Lord didn’t already see everything, Pio nodded his head toward the scene in the square below. “Just look at those thieves down there selling as ‘relics’ pieces of rags stained with chicken blood. Somehow they manage to fool the poor pilgrims into believing it’s my blood from the stigmata. Every day pilgrims succumb to the schemes of swindlers like them who concoct all kinds of devious plans to steal their money.”
Now a single tear trickled down Pio’s cheek and into the dark mesh of his beard. “Mi dispiace, I’m sorry, Jesus,” he whispered, as if the crowd below might hear him. “Please forgive my complaining. I accept everything from Your loving hands for the salvation of souls.”
Later that afternoon during confessions, white-bearded Fra Guistino, gasping for breath as if he’d raced to Padre Pio’s confessional, poked his balding head inside, smiled meekly at the priest, and silently handed him a message. “Grazie, thank you,” Pio said, tucking it into the pocket of his habit. As Guistino quickly bowed his head in respect, turned, and marched toward the exit, Padre Pio continued listening to the penitent who had patiently waited, kneeling on the other side of the thin partition and small eye-level, dark-screened door that hid her from him.
When the woman had finished iterating her list of sins, she waited silently for a penance and absolution from Padre Pio, but must have been shocked when he asked her in his sternest voice, “And what do you plan to do about the money you stole from your employer?”
“Che? What?” she asked in a hoarse cry of surprise. “Che cosa ha ditto? What did you say?”
In spite of her apparent incredulity, Padre Pio refused to retract his question, knowing that the Lord had revealed the woman’s un-confessed and greatest sin to him. “You heard me,” Pio growled, “the stolen money. What do you plan to do about it?” He could hear her sobbing now, but he refused to ease up on her. I know You’ll call me to account, Jesus, on the Day of Judgment, if I don’t look after the wellbeing of her eternal soul. “Since you don’t want to tell me what you should do about that money,” Pio growled, “I will tell you!” In a harsh voice pitched low enough so that the other penitents in the small friary church couldn’t hear, Pio ordered the woman to go home to Foggia, return the money to her employer, and then make a thorough confession to her local parish priest.
“But, Padre, I can’t return the money,” she said, choking on her tears.
“That’s right; you can’t because you’ve already spent it. Che sciocca! What a fool!” Pio sadly shook his head. After coughing into his gloved hand and clearing his throat which felt parched from the hours of counseling he’d already done that morning and hot afternoon in the stuffy confines of the confessional, he continued, “You can’t return the money, but you can offer to work off your debt.”
Almost in a whisper, the woman humbly said, “Si, Padre, I will do as you say.”
With a sigh of relief, Pio congratulated her with, “Splendido! For your penance, go and do as you have promised to the Lord and to me.” As he gave her absolution, he slowly and reverently made the Sign of the Cross in her direction with his pierced and bleeding hand. “Go in peace. Sei in grazia di Dio. You are in the grace of God.” Oh my Jesus, he added silently, if only I felt that peace in my own soul. But my constant companion is the fear of offending You. Oh my God, when will you relieve this torment? Heaven, as usual, gave him no answer, or at least none that he recognized.
Not until an hour later when Padre Pio gave absolution to the last penitent, did he hobble on swollen feet out of the dim light of the confessional and down the hallway to his cell where he read the message Fra Guistino had handed him. Sinking wearily onto the hard bed that waited for him like a faithful friend in his small cell, Pio left his fingerless gloves on as he opened the piece of paper on which someone had typed a message.
What Padre Pio read made his head ache as if with a migraine, and pain shot through his chest, forcing him to double over with coughing. Letting the paper fall to the floor, he let himself fall backward onto the hard, thin mattress, as if the words of the message had almost killed him. This can’t be, Jesus, he silently prayed as he stared at the cracked ceiling above him. It must be a joke; a terrible joke. But he knew it wasn’t. Haven’t my stigmata caused enough trouble already? With the dramatic growth of Pio’s ministry as the flood of pilgrims to Our Lady of Grace friary steadily increased since word about the stigmata had begun to spread after September of last year, had come doctors sent by the Provincial Padre Benedetto as well as by the Vatican to inspect Pio’s stigmata and to ask him a seemingly unending list of questions in regard to the wounds and his own general health, both mental and physical. Padre Pio had endured painful humiliations because of all of that, as well as because of rumors, criticisms, and accusations surrounding the stigmata. Even the secular priests down the mountain in San Giovanni are speaking out against me, Pio now thought.
His beloved spiritual directors Padres Benedetto and Agostino had assured Pio in their letters that the priests were just jealous because Pio’s growing fame attracted the secular priests’ parishioners up the mountain to Our Lady of Grace friary and away from their own parish priests. One of the parish priests Don Giovanni Miscio had even written to newspapers, to the Capuchin minister general, and to the Vatican, accusing Pio and his fellow friars of making money off the pilgrims. Sadness now threatened to overwhelm Pio as he recalled the ugly actions that had been taken against him and his fellow friars.
With tears now spilling down his cheeks and into the dark mesh of his beard, and in spite of the stabbing pain the movement of the coarse material of his habit caused his side wound, Pio sat up and read again the message from the Capuchin headquarters:
"Dear Padre Pio,
As you know, in spite of our orders to Padre Benedetto to not allow word of your
stigmata to leak to the public, an article about it recently appeared in the Naples
newspaper Mattino. The sensationalism caused by this unwanted publicity has
prompted us, during our most recent Chapter meeting, to elect Padre Pietro of
Ischitella to replace Benedetto as Provincial. Also, Benedetto will no longer act as
your spiritual director. We also voted to transfer the father guardian Padre Paolino
from Our Lady of Grace to the friary at Gesualdo. Your new father guardian will
be Padre Lorenzo of San Marco in Lamis. In addition, we have received word from
the Vatican saying the Holy Office has ordered a week-long medical examination
of you and the stigmata by Dr. Amico Bignami of the University of Rome. He is an
atheist, and so the Vatican believes he will give an unbiased evaluation."
With the words of the Chapter meeting letter clawing at his mind and heart, Pio stared upward through his tears at Christ crucified on the cross hanging above his bed. Why did You take away Padre Benedetto, one of my best friends and strongest supports? It wasn’t his fault that word about the stigmata leaked to the public. I don’t know whose fault it was, but it wasn’t his. You know very well, Lord, that he ordered complete secrecy. Padre Pio figured that Rome had blamed Benedetto and the Capuchins, and that the Capuchins, in turn, had used Benedetto as their scapegoat. If the truth were known, the seminarians who study here would’ve been enough to spread the word about the stigmata to all of Italy and even beyond.
Peering again at the letter he still held in his gloved hand, Pio’s inner pain grew to an almost-unbearable strength when he read, “We also voted to transfer the father guardian Padre Paolino.” The beloved Benedetto and Paolino, suddenly yanked from Padre Pio’s life! Why, Lord? Sighing, Pio now thought about having to soon endure another embarrassing, painful examination of the stigmata—this time for eight long days by a stranger, a Dr. Amico Bignami from Rome. Again, Lord, I ask You why? But Pio knew it would be useless to argue with God or with the Capuchin officials.
Padre Pio stared upward again at his crucified Lord on the cross hanging on the white-washed wall above his bed. Shame now shot through him when he contemplated Christ’s Passion. “I offered myself to You as a victim, Lord, and here I am complaining about my sufferings. Please forgive me. Let me join You on the cross; unite me to Yourself and use me to continue Your suffering here on earth for the salvation of souls.” Pio smiled as he remembered how the Mother of God, two years ago, had asked for sacrifices when she appeared to three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal. “Sacrifices, Lord,” Pio now said, shame once again piercing his heart and soul. “Your immaculate and virginal Mother asked everyone to offer up their sufferings, big or small, to God as prayers for humanity. Unworthy though I am, Jesus, I once again offer myself to You as a victim to share in Your sufferings for the salvation of all.” Pio knew this offering of himself would not take away the pain of losing his beloved friends Benedetto and Paolino, or the mental and physical pains the coming eight-day examination would cause him, but now he could offer genuine thanks for those opportunities to suffer for the benefit of others.
Spiritually abandoning himself to God, Pio continued to contemplate the pastel-yellow corpus whose dramatic expression seemed to beg him to share in Christ’s sufferings. Yet a palpable peace began to spread throughout the young priest’s mind, body, and soul, and a smile budded on his lips. Now enveloped in God’s loving embrace, Pio was able to forget, at least for the moment, the increasingly large numbers of pilgrims who traveled up the mountain to Our Lady of Grace friary and church to beg prayers and blessings from him, the now-famous stigmatic, and to confess to him. But out of those hundreds of visitors, only a handful of people, including his close friends Padres Paolino, Benedetto, and Agostino, knew that Padre Pio was traveling further and more frequently than any of the pilgrims—without ever leaving San Giovanni Rotondo!
Now, still contemplating Christ’s passion, Padre Pio was barely aware of the dimming light in his small cell as that summer evening’s sun disappeared behind the monastery’s garden wall outside his window. “Oh my Jesus,” he whispered up at the crucifix above his bed, “I am ready to do whatever You will for me. Use me, Lord, to help Your hurting people, because I know that You, in Your great love for them, feel their every pain.” As if in answer to Pio’s prayer, the Spirit of God, in an instant, mysteriously transported him to a location hundreds of miles away.
When Pio arrived at the unfamiliar location, he was aware, as was usual in these “travels” of his, that he had been bilocated, caused to be in two places at one time. But as usual, he wasn’t certain if God had transported his body or soul or both. Only last week Padre Paolino had received word from the Vatican that Padre Pio had been seen at a recent canonization in St. Peter’s Square, but Paolino had been with Pio during that exact time period, and so Paolino knew the stigmatic had never left the friary.
From Scripture and the biographical information Padre Pio had read about the saints, he knew that the Spirit of God had bilocated many believers before him, including America’s St. Mother Cabrini. The book of Acts in the Bible also assured Pio that God had bilocated people even in Jesus’ time, including Christ’s disciple Philip who, after baptizing the important eunuch, disappeared because “the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip” miles away to the city of Azotus.
Now on this sultry summer evening, without any effort on his part, Padre Pio had suddenly left the stuffiness of his small cell and had found himself in the front yard of an old, ramshackle farmhouse nestled in a valley along a narrow creek whose waters he could hear sloshing against the nearby rocky bank. Where am I? he wondered. The cool air wafting toward him from the creek made him shiver beneath his long brown habit. Scanning the yard, he could see no other persons, but only a lone platoon of pines standing at attention as if guarding the three dirty-white cows that huddled silently together beneath the bottom branches. Why am I here, Lord?
From the direction of the house a mother’s sudden shrill cry for help reached his ears, and he knew the “why.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Chapter 5 of Pierced by Love: A Fictionalized Biography of St. Padre Pio
SOULS OF THE DEAD
Chapter 5
On that frosty October morning high in the Gargano Mountains a young, gangly boy from San Giovanni Rotondo found Padre Pio settled on a wooden chair in the choir loft. The priest reluctantly halted his praying of the rosary and glanced momentarily at the lifelike corpus nailed to the meter-high crucifix before which he had received the stigmata only weeks ago. Sighing, Pio turned toward the ruddy-faced boy who handed him a letter.
Smiling, Pio said, “Grazie, thank you, son,” and reached into the pocket of his habit for a piece of the hard, sweet candy he always kept there to share with his students and anyone who wanted a piece. As soon as the boy left, Pio immediately glanced at the name of the sender. Pellegrina! A cold dread wormed its way through him as he read her message which related how, almost as soon as she had left Pio two weeks ago, her baby Alfredo had contracted influenza and died. She said the only thing that had kept her from losing her mind was the strong presence of Julius in her life and in her home.
Pellegrina next related to Pio how Franceschino, the only child of their brother Michele Forgione, had been so damaged by the flu that, according to the doctor from nearby Benevento, the little boy would probably never fully recover. As an update on what she had told Pio during her recent visit with him, Pellegrina wrote that the doctor also said that the flu had caused brain damage to Felicita’s two-year-old Ettoruccio and that the same virus had left her six-year-old Giuseppina permanently weakened. According to the doctor, one out of three people in southern Italy alone had been stricken with Spanish influenza, resulting in thousands of deaths.
Now numb from the devastating news, Pio squeezed shut his eyes, wondering if he could bear to continue reading his sister’s letter. Strengthen me, Jesus, he silently pleaded, glancing up at the ancient crucifix and gaining courage from his silent adoration of the sacred Face contorted in agony. Returning his attention to the letter in his wounded hands, a measure of relief entered Pio’s heart as he read that the influenza had bypassed his twenty-three-year-old sister Graziella—known as Sister Pia of the semi-cloistered community of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows in Rome. Tears of gratitude welled up in Pio’s eyes as he read that Papa and Michele Forgione, working in America, had written Mamma and told her they had both suffered only mild cases of the flu, even though the deadly Spanish strain was sweeping through America too.
Pellegrina ended her letter with, “I’m sorry I didn’t come tell you all of this in person, Francesco, but Julius and I have been nursing each other back to health after our own bouts with the flu. I do promise to visit you soon though. With much love, Pellegrina.”
Overcome by grief, Pio dropped the letter onto the wooden floor of the choir loft and sank to his knees on the hard, rough surface. His sobs prevented him from praying aloud, but silently he begged the Lord to let him die because he couldn’t bear anymore heartache. I’ve never stopped praying for every member of my family, Jesus, and yet You’ve let so many of them die or be left permanently damaged by the influenza. Why, Lord? Is it because I’m such a terrible sinner? Unworthy of having my prayers heard? Fearing that his thoughts represented reality, Pio silently stared upward at the lifelike, pastel-yellow corpus of the crucified Christ. How long the mourning friar remained in that position he didn’t know, but finally exhausted emotionally as well as physically, he forced himself into a standing position and hobbled down the steps on throbbing feet. Coughing, Pio stumbled his way toward the corridor that led into the friary. Passing under the archway separating church and friary, he barely noticed Padre Paolino counseling some peasants in the opposite corner of the small, dimly lit church.
Moments later, after entering his cell, which barely allowed for his narrow bed, small desk, and washbasin, Pio collapsed onto his thin mattress where he remained for the next six days, suffering not only from grief and the stigmata, but also from the influenza which had finally overcome him in his weakened condition. But much to Pio’s dismay, he recovered, due in large part to the devoted care of Fra Nicola and Padre Paolino. November 13, Pio wrote to his spiritual director Padre Benedetto and complained, “I asked Jesus to let me die of the influenza, but He decided I must remain here to suffer the agony of losing so many family members.” Pio told his spiritual director how he now felt totally alone, his heart, soul, and body almost paralyzed by pain and by the knowledge of his own sinfulness. Benedetto’s many letters in reply helped to heal Pio’s grieving heart, but failed to convince Pio that God was not somehow perennially displeased with him.
By January 1919, Benedetto’s encouraging letters, the end of the First World War, and the end of the worst part of the flu epidemic brought Padre Pio a brighter outlook and the full return of his Franciscan joy and sense of humor. The post-war return of Our Lady of Grace’s four soldier-friars also helped Pio to smile and laugh again, as did the recovery of his beloved students from influenza. And slowly, an ever-increasing number of new friars came to live at Our Lady of Grace, easing the burdens of Padre Paolino, Fra Nicola, Pio, and their other four confreres. When the youngest of the new friars first witnessed Padre Pio wincing in pain as he plodded down the friary hallway on swollen feet, the stubble-bearded friar exclaimed, “Padre, how awful that you have to experience such terrible pain!” With his recently renewed sense of humor, Pio glanced at the pimple-faced friar whose beard consisted of no more than a sparse patch of stubble on his chin, and calmly replied, trying not to grin, “Ah, if only I could walk on my hands.”
As word about The Holy Friar’s stigmata continued to spread in ever-widening waves, his reputation for holiness drew increasing numbers of pilgrims to San Giovanni Rotondo and up the steep, rocky, pot-holed mule track, with its frequent hairpin turns, to the ancient friary and church that had, only a year ago, remained isolated from the rest of the world. Even though Pio, whose holy reputation had already earned him the title of “Il Monaco,” insisted he was nothing more than “un’ macerone senza sale, a piece of spaghetti without any salt on it,” by spring, not only had the number of pilgrims seeking Pio’s intercession increased, so, too, had the number of holy souls from Purgatory who came to beg for his prayers for their release into Heaven. Pio would always promise his heartfelt prayers and assure them with, “Basta pregare—prayer is enough.”
Early one late-March evening in the friary garden with Padre Paolino, surrounded by almond trees laden with pink blossoms and dwarfed by the ancient budding cypresses and evergreen pines, Padre Pio allowed his senses to taste spring’s newborn beauty, the sweet smell of the blossoms, the canary-like song of the goldfinch. In spite of his aching feet, he smiled in gratitude for the return of milder weather after months of heavy snows and fierce winds that had blown up the mountain from the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Manfredonia. This evening, with his wide brown shawl stretched across his shoulders, Pio strolled beside his superior down the narrow avenues created by the rows of trees. But Pio’s smile gradually turned downward as he recalled his family members, students, parishioners, and others who had fallen victim to the merciless influenza epidemic. And he couldn’t restrain a deep sigh as he remembered the devastation left in the wake of the First World War. Following on the heels of those dark thoughts, memories of last night’s visitor from purgatory stole into Pio’s mind. Even the friary cat who waltzed up to him and leisurely brushed against his robed leg barely failed to grab his attention.
“Padre Pio!”
His superior’s voice wrenched Pio back to the present. “Eh?” Pio muttered, blinking at Paolino. “Mi dispiace, I’m sorry, Padre Paolino. I was thinking about something else.”
Peering at Pio through wire-rimmed glasses, the stout superior smiled gently at him. “And what might that be?” Paolino said, motioning for Pio to sit with him on the stone bench beside the path.
Settling beside his superior, Pio sighed in gratitude as the pain began to subside in his swollen feet. He bent over and picked up a handful of pebbles. Slowly tossing them one by one back onto the path, he began, “How can I help all the people who come to me as well as the even-greater number of souls of the dead who visit me from Purgatory? So much suffering, Padre Paolino. Too much. My heart aches for them, and I fear that my. . . . that my. . . .”
“What do you fear?” Paolino gently asked, his dark eyes glistening with the last rays of the sun as it hovered just above the top of the garden’s stone wall.
A tear trickled from Pio’s eye and he remained silent, knowing that if he answered, more tears would follow. How can I explain to Paolino that if I’m not certain about the state of my own soul, how can I even hope to be used by Jesus to save the souls of others?
“Tell me, my son,” said Paolino, his dark six-inch beard flowing forward as he leaned toward Pio. “What do you fear?”
As Padre Pio poured out his heart to his superior, he no longer tried to restrain his tears. “I fear that my sinfulness, weaknesses, and faults will prevent Jesus from using me to help all the suffering people who struggle up the mountain to ask me for prayers.” Covering his eyes with pierced hands that now trembled from the force of his emotions, Pio said, “And I’ve told you before that more souls from Purgatory visit me than do the living; those souls of the dead beg me to say Mass, to pray to God for them so that He will quickly take them to Heaven.”
Peering again at his superior and seeing the compassion behind those wire-rimmed glasses, Pio almost didn’t notice the burning in the center of each hand where his salty tears had soaked through his gloves and invaded the stigmata. “Perche? Why me? Why do the Holy Souls in Purgatory come to me for prayer?” Staring at his superior he said, “I am niente, nothing!”
Surprised by Pio’s vehemence but not his attitude toward himself, Paolino pushed his glasses back into place on his long, thin nose and said, “It’s good to be humble, to be aware of your lowliness compared to Almighty God, but don’t forget that He loves you with an unfathomable love, my son, and that He gave you so many spiritual gifts—bilocation, prophecy, healing, perfume, reading of souls, visions, the stigmata—how can you doubt that He wants to use you in His great design to heal and save souls?”
“You know as well as I do that spiritual gifts don’t make a person holy,” said Pio, sighing. His shoulders sagged as if carrying an impossible load. Remembering the words of Job, he added, “‘I’m just a ‘maggot,’ a ‘worm’.”
Paolino smiled gently at him. “But remember the Psalm that says we are all ‘fearfully and wonderfully made.’ And if you can’t believe in your own goodness, my son, believe in the Holy Spirit’s desire to sanctify you and to use you to save souls, to heal hearts and bodies, as He already has done so many times and will surely continue to do. Your holiness is from God; trust Him for it.”
When Pio’s frown grew into a scowl and no reply came from his pursed lips, Paolino sighed and placed a large hand gently on one of his drooping shoulder. “You’re so gifted at reading the souls of all your penitents, and yet you still don’t see the sanctity of your own.”
“Sanctity?” Pio grumbled. Tears stopped coursing down his cheeks as he hurled the last pebble onto the path and stared into his superior’s bespectacled eyes. “I’ve told you how the devils torment me every night; how God seems most of the time to hide from me; and still you want me to believe I’ve reached some kind of sanctified state?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve asked Jesus to accept me as a victim to alleviate the suffering of all souls, including those in Purgatory, but what if the stigmata and my lung problems and my other sufferings are not enough? What if all my prayers, my Rosaries, my Masses are not enough because of my sinfulness?” Almost choking on a new batch of tears, he added, “This is the cause of my continual agony.”
“Since there seems to be nothing I can say that will change your mind, I’ll continue to pray for you, my son,” said Paolino. “And I want you to come to me whenever you need to talk. Okay?”
“Ma si; but yes.” Pio finally smiled at his superior, grateful for his guidance as well as his friendship. As the early evening sunlight gently spilled onto the garden wall, Pio shivered beneath his shawl in the shade of the flock of pink blossoms of an almond tree. Even though the hills beyond the garden wall reflected a rainbow of colors created by the setting sun, Pio could, at this moment, appreciate none of its beauty.
“Let’s go inside,” Paolino said, drawing his own dark shawl closer around his stout neck and thick shoulders.
2 a.m. the next morning found Padre Pio in the choir loft, unable to sleep. As he had hoped, he had the ancient chapel to himself. The early March moonlight spilled through the one window and onto the floor beside the hard wooden chair where Pio sat next to the railing. “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” Pio began, fingering his Rosary beads and smiling as he gazed down into the main part of the church and at the picture of Our Lady of Grace positioned above the tabernacle of the main altar. The dim light from the lamp burning before the Tabernacle barely illuminated Mary’s brown, almond-shaped eyes and delicate neckline. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.” Adoration expanded his heart as Pio gazed at the Mother of God and the Divine Son she held. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” The movement of Pio’s fingers as they sought for and held, in turn, each bead, aggravated the stigmata in his hands, causing him to wince. But despite the pain and the blood dampening his fingerless gloves, he continued. “Glory be to. . . .”
A sudden loud noise erupting from the altar disrupted Pio’s prayers. I thought I was alone. He winced at the sound of breaking glass. “Che cos’e quello? What’s that?” Squinting now at the altar, Pio shouted, “Who’s there?”
Silence answered him, so Padre Pio continued with his Rosary. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be. . . .”
Again sudden noises disrupted Pio’s prayers. Glowering out at the altar, Pio scrutinized the area as best he could in the dim light. He almost dropped his Rosary beads when he saw movement on the altar. Did that candle just change position in front of Our Lady of Grace’s picture? Despite his swollen feet, Pio stood up and leaned against the railing, hoping to get a better view of the altar. Yes, that candle moved again and now it’s . . . falling! What’s going on? He couldn’t see anyone who might be causing the commotion below. Am I losing my mind?
Determined to find out the truth, Padre Pio tucked his Rosary into the inner pocket of his coarse habit, pulled his wool shawl around his neck, and lumbered down the stairs, ignoring the pains shooting from his wounded feet up through his legs. Hobbling down the narrow center aisle toward the main altar, Pio stopped and stared when he spied the frail, spindly figure of a young man in a long, dark Capuchin habit of the style worn by novices.
Even when the dark figure of the novice ambled into the dim light in front of the altar and glanced up at Pio, the Padre did not recognize him, so Pio demanded, “Who are you?”
Bowing his head toward Pio the novice said, “Fra Amanzio.”
“What are you doing here?”
“The cleaning,” said Amanzio, stooping down to pick up the fragments of the broken vase.
A shiver slithered through Pio. A strange novice cleaning in the dark? But in spite of his uneasiness, Pio stepped to within three feet of Amanzio who had picked the bent tapered candle from the floor and was now trying in vain to straighten it. “I’ve never seen you before,” Pio said in his gruffest tone. “Tell me the truth; why are you here?”
Placing the still-bent candle back in its holder on the altar, Fra Amanzio sighed. When he turned and stared into Pio’s eyes, the priest noticed tears beginning to spill down the novice’s bony cheeks and onto his sparsely bearded chin. “Tell me, figlio mio, my son,” Pio said softly, his former uneasiness and frustration replaced by compassion, “why are you here?” The priest thought he knew the answer because lately the souls of the dead visiting him from Purgatory and asking for his prayers had outnumbered the hundreds of living persons who flocked to Pio for his help and intercession. And never a day passed that he didn’t pray for the souls in Purgatory in obedience to the inscription over one of the friary’s cell doors: “Pray for the souls in Purgatory; they did not have the wisdom to make good use of their talent.”
The novice knelt on one knee before Pio, gently grasped the stigmatic’s gloved hand, and tenderly kissed it. “I’ve come from Purgatory,” began the novice, “and I’m doing my penance here.” Sniffling back his tears and standing up, he studied Pio’s bearded face and, obviously sensing the priest’s change of attitude, continued, “When I was a novice at the friary of St. Francis of Assisi near Sant’ Elia a Pianisi I was assigned Sacristan duties, but I failed to do them well; I was often careless and so made lots of mistakes.”
Padre Pio struggled not to grin as he pointed at the bent tapered candle that drooped in its holder on the altar. “You mean like breaking candles and vases?” Pio then pointed to the ceramic fragments the novice had carefully piled up on the floor beside the altar.
“Yes,” the novice whispered in a voice filled with regret as he stared at the evidence. Glancing again at Pio’s still-sober face he said in a voice hoarse with emotion, “With Our Lord’s permission I’ve come here to ask for your prayers, Padre Pio. If you’ll offer up your prayers, sufferings, and especially a Mass for me, I’ll be allowed to go to Heaven to see the face of God and to share in the blessedness of eternal life.” New tears had begun to course down Amanzio’s gaunt cheeks.
No longer tempted to grin or chuckle, Pio felt the young novice’s inner pain. “Of course, figlio mio, of course.”
And Fra Amanzio disappeared.
______________________________________________________________________
Chapter 5
On that frosty October morning high in the Gargano Mountains a young, gangly boy from San Giovanni Rotondo found Padre Pio settled on a wooden chair in the choir loft. The priest reluctantly halted his praying of the rosary and glanced momentarily at the lifelike corpus nailed to the meter-high crucifix before which he had received the stigmata only weeks ago. Sighing, Pio turned toward the ruddy-faced boy who handed him a letter.
Smiling, Pio said, “Grazie, thank you, son,” and reached into the pocket of his habit for a piece of the hard, sweet candy he always kept there to share with his students and anyone who wanted a piece. As soon as the boy left, Pio immediately glanced at the name of the sender. Pellegrina! A cold dread wormed its way through him as he read her message which related how, almost as soon as she had left Pio two weeks ago, her baby Alfredo had contracted influenza and died. She said the only thing that had kept her from losing her mind was the strong presence of Julius in her life and in her home.
Pellegrina next related to Pio how Franceschino, the only child of their brother Michele Forgione, had been so damaged by the flu that, according to the doctor from nearby Benevento, the little boy would probably never fully recover. As an update on what she had told Pio during her recent visit with him, Pellegrina wrote that the doctor also said that the flu had caused brain damage to Felicita’s two-year-old Ettoruccio and that the same virus had left her six-year-old Giuseppina permanently weakened. According to the doctor, one out of three people in southern Italy alone had been stricken with Spanish influenza, resulting in thousands of deaths.
Now numb from the devastating news, Pio squeezed shut his eyes, wondering if he could bear to continue reading his sister’s letter. Strengthen me, Jesus, he silently pleaded, glancing up at the ancient crucifix and gaining courage from his silent adoration of the sacred Face contorted in agony. Returning his attention to the letter in his wounded hands, a measure of relief entered Pio’s heart as he read that the influenza had bypassed his twenty-three-year-old sister Graziella—known as Sister Pia of the semi-cloistered community of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows in Rome. Tears of gratitude welled up in Pio’s eyes as he read that Papa and Michele Forgione, working in America, had written Mamma and told her they had both suffered only mild cases of the flu, even though the deadly Spanish strain was sweeping through America too.
Pellegrina ended her letter with, “I’m sorry I didn’t come tell you all of this in person, Francesco, but Julius and I have been nursing each other back to health after our own bouts with the flu. I do promise to visit you soon though. With much love, Pellegrina.”
Overcome by grief, Pio dropped the letter onto the wooden floor of the choir loft and sank to his knees on the hard, rough surface. His sobs prevented him from praying aloud, but silently he begged the Lord to let him die because he couldn’t bear anymore heartache. I’ve never stopped praying for every member of my family, Jesus, and yet You’ve let so many of them die or be left permanently damaged by the influenza. Why, Lord? Is it because I’m such a terrible sinner? Unworthy of having my prayers heard? Fearing that his thoughts represented reality, Pio silently stared upward at the lifelike, pastel-yellow corpus of the crucified Christ. How long the mourning friar remained in that position he didn’t know, but finally exhausted emotionally as well as physically, he forced himself into a standing position and hobbled down the steps on throbbing feet. Coughing, Pio stumbled his way toward the corridor that led into the friary. Passing under the archway separating church and friary, he barely noticed Padre Paolino counseling some peasants in the opposite corner of the small, dimly lit church.
Moments later, after entering his cell, which barely allowed for his narrow bed, small desk, and washbasin, Pio collapsed onto his thin mattress where he remained for the next six days, suffering not only from grief and the stigmata, but also from the influenza which had finally overcome him in his weakened condition. But much to Pio’s dismay, he recovered, due in large part to the devoted care of Fra Nicola and Padre Paolino. November 13, Pio wrote to his spiritual director Padre Benedetto and complained, “I asked Jesus to let me die of the influenza, but He decided I must remain here to suffer the agony of losing so many family members.” Pio told his spiritual director how he now felt totally alone, his heart, soul, and body almost paralyzed by pain and by the knowledge of his own sinfulness. Benedetto’s many letters in reply helped to heal Pio’s grieving heart, but failed to convince Pio that God was not somehow perennially displeased with him.
By January 1919, Benedetto’s encouraging letters, the end of the First World War, and the end of the worst part of the flu epidemic brought Padre Pio a brighter outlook and the full return of his Franciscan joy and sense of humor. The post-war return of Our Lady of Grace’s four soldier-friars also helped Pio to smile and laugh again, as did the recovery of his beloved students from influenza. And slowly, an ever-increasing number of new friars came to live at Our Lady of Grace, easing the burdens of Padre Paolino, Fra Nicola, Pio, and their other four confreres. When the youngest of the new friars first witnessed Padre Pio wincing in pain as he plodded down the friary hallway on swollen feet, the stubble-bearded friar exclaimed, “Padre, how awful that you have to experience such terrible pain!” With his recently renewed sense of humor, Pio glanced at the pimple-faced friar whose beard consisted of no more than a sparse patch of stubble on his chin, and calmly replied, trying not to grin, “Ah, if only I could walk on my hands.”
As word about The Holy Friar’s stigmata continued to spread in ever-widening waves, his reputation for holiness drew increasing numbers of pilgrims to San Giovanni Rotondo and up the steep, rocky, pot-holed mule track, with its frequent hairpin turns, to the ancient friary and church that had, only a year ago, remained isolated from the rest of the world. Even though Pio, whose holy reputation had already earned him the title of “Il Monaco,” insisted he was nothing more than “un’ macerone senza sale, a piece of spaghetti without any salt on it,” by spring, not only had the number of pilgrims seeking Pio’s intercession increased, so, too, had the number of holy souls from Purgatory who came to beg for his prayers for their release into Heaven. Pio would always promise his heartfelt prayers and assure them with, “Basta pregare—prayer is enough.”
Early one late-March evening in the friary garden with Padre Paolino, surrounded by almond trees laden with pink blossoms and dwarfed by the ancient budding cypresses and evergreen pines, Padre Pio allowed his senses to taste spring’s newborn beauty, the sweet smell of the blossoms, the canary-like song of the goldfinch. In spite of his aching feet, he smiled in gratitude for the return of milder weather after months of heavy snows and fierce winds that had blown up the mountain from the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Manfredonia. This evening, with his wide brown shawl stretched across his shoulders, Pio strolled beside his superior down the narrow avenues created by the rows of trees. But Pio’s smile gradually turned downward as he recalled his family members, students, parishioners, and others who had fallen victim to the merciless influenza epidemic. And he couldn’t restrain a deep sigh as he remembered the devastation left in the wake of the First World War. Following on the heels of those dark thoughts, memories of last night’s visitor from purgatory stole into Pio’s mind. Even the friary cat who waltzed up to him and leisurely brushed against his robed leg barely failed to grab his attention.
“Padre Pio!”
His superior’s voice wrenched Pio back to the present. “Eh?” Pio muttered, blinking at Paolino. “Mi dispiace, I’m sorry, Padre Paolino. I was thinking about something else.”
Peering at Pio through wire-rimmed glasses, the stout superior smiled gently at him. “And what might that be?” Paolino said, motioning for Pio to sit with him on the stone bench beside the path.
Settling beside his superior, Pio sighed in gratitude as the pain began to subside in his swollen feet. He bent over and picked up a handful of pebbles. Slowly tossing them one by one back onto the path, he began, “How can I help all the people who come to me as well as the even-greater number of souls of the dead who visit me from Purgatory? So much suffering, Padre Paolino. Too much. My heart aches for them, and I fear that my. . . . that my. . . .”
“What do you fear?” Paolino gently asked, his dark eyes glistening with the last rays of the sun as it hovered just above the top of the garden’s stone wall.
A tear trickled from Pio’s eye and he remained silent, knowing that if he answered, more tears would follow. How can I explain to Paolino that if I’m not certain about the state of my own soul, how can I even hope to be used by Jesus to save the souls of others?
“Tell me, my son,” said Paolino, his dark six-inch beard flowing forward as he leaned toward Pio. “What do you fear?”
As Padre Pio poured out his heart to his superior, he no longer tried to restrain his tears. “I fear that my sinfulness, weaknesses, and faults will prevent Jesus from using me to help all the suffering people who struggle up the mountain to ask me for prayers.” Covering his eyes with pierced hands that now trembled from the force of his emotions, Pio said, “And I’ve told you before that more souls from Purgatory visit me than do the living; those souls of the dead beg me to say Mass, to pray to God for them so that He will quickly take them to Heaven.”
Peering again at his superior and seeing the compassion behind those wire-rimmed glasses, Pio almost didn’t notice the burning in the center of each hand where his salty tears had soaked through his gloves and invaded the stigmata. “Perche? Why me? Why do the Holy Souls in Purgatory come to me for prayer?” Staring at his superior he said, “I am niente, nothing!”
Surprised by Pio’s vehemence but not his attitude toward himself, Paolino pushed his glasses back into place on his long, thin nose and said, “It’s good to be humble, to be aware of your lowliness compared to Almighty God, but don’t forget that He loves you with an unfathomable love, my son, and that He gave you so many spiritual gifts—bilocation, prophecy, healing, perfume, reading of souls, visions, the stigmata—how can you doubt that He wants to use you in His great design to heal and save souls?”
“You know as well as I do that spiritual gifts don’t make a person holy,” said Pio, sighing. His shoulders sagged as if carrying an impossible load. Remembering the words of Job, he added, “‘I’m just a ‘maggot,’ a ‘worm’.”
Paolino smiled gently at him. “But remember the Psalm that says we are all ‘fearfully and wonderfully made.’ And if you can’t believe in your own goodness, my son, believe in the Holy Spirit’s desire to sanctify you and to use you to save souls, to heal hearts and bodies, as He already has done so many times and will surely continue to do. Your holiness is from God; trust Him for it.”
When Pio’s frown grew into a scowl and no reply came from his pursed lips, Paolino sighed and placed a large hand gently on one of his drooping shoulder. “You’re so gifted at reading the souls of all your penitents, and yet you still don’t see the sanctity of your own.”
“Sanctity?” Pio grumbled. Tears stopped coursing down his cheeks as he hurled the last pebble onto the path and stared into his superior’s bespectacled eyes. “I’ve told you how the devils torment me every night; how God seems most of the time to hide from me; and still you want me to believe I’ve reached some kind of sanctified state?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve asked Jesus to accept me as a victim to alleviate the suffering of all souls, including those in Purgatory, but what if the stigmata and my lung problems and my other sufferings are not enough? What if all my prayers, my Rosaries, my Masses are not enough because of my sinfulness?” Almost choking on a new batch of tears, he added, “This is the cause of my continual agony.”
“Since there seems to be nothing I can say that will change your mind, I’ll continue to pray for you, my son,” said Paolino. “And I want you to come to me whenever you need to talk. Okay?”
“Ma si; but yes.” Pio finally smiled at his superior, grateful for his guidance as well as his friendship. As the early evening sunlight gently spilled onto the garden wall, Pio shivered beneath his shawl in the shade of the flock of pink blossoms of an almond tree. Even though the hills beyond the garden wall reflected a rainbow of colors created by the setting sun, Pio could, at this moment, appreciate none of its beauty.
“Let’s go inside,” Paolino said, drawing his own dark shawl closer around his stout neck and thick shoulders.
2 a.m. the next morning found Padre Pio in the choir loft, unable to sleep. As he had hoped, he had the ancient chapel to himself. The early March moonlight spilled through the one window and onto the floor beside the hard wooden chair where Pio sat next to the railing. “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” Pio began, fingering his Rosary beads and smiling as he gazed down into the main part of the church and at the picture of Our Lady of Grace positioned above the tabernacle of the main altar. The dim light from the lamp burning before the Tabernacle barely illuminated Mary’s brown, almond-shaped eyes and delicate neckline. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.” Adoration expanded his heart as Pio gazed at the Mother of God and the Divine Son she held. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” The movement of Pio’s fingers as they sought for and held, in turn, each bead, aggravated the stigmata in his hands, causing him to wince. But despite the pain and the blood dampening his fingerless gloves, he continued. “Glory be to. . . .”
A sudden loud noise erupting from the altar disrupted Pio’s prayers. I thought I was alone. He winced at the sound of breaking glass. “Che cos’e quello? What’s that?” Squinting now at the altar, Pio shouted, “Who’s there?”
Silence answered him, so Padre Pio continued with his Rosary. “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be. . . .”
Again sudden noises disrupted Pio’s prayers. Glowering out at the altar, Pio scrutinized the area as best he could in the dim light. He almost dropped his Rosary beads when he saw movement on the altar. Did that candle just change position in front of Our Lady of Grace’s picture? Despite his swollen feet, Pio stood up and leaned against the railing, hoping to get a better view of the altar. Yes, that candle moved again and now it’s . . . falling! What’s going on? He couldn’t see anyone who might be causing the commotion below. Am I losing my mind?
Determined to find out the truth, Padre Pio tucked his Rosary into the inner pocket of his coarse habit, pulled his wool shawl around his neck, and lumbered down the stairs, ignoring the pains shooting from his wounded feet up through his legs. Hobbling down the narrow center aisle toward the main altar, Pio stopped and stared when he spied the frail, spindly figure of a young man in a long, dark Capuchin habit of the style worn by novices.
Even when the dark figure of the novice ambled into the dim light in front of the altar and glanced up at Pio, the Padre did not recognize him, so Pio demanded, “Who are you?”
Bowing his head toward Pio the novice said, “Fra Amanzio.”
“What are you doing here?”
“The cleaning,” said Amanzio, stooping down to pick up the fragments of the broken vase.
A shiver slithered through Pio. A strange novice cleaning in the dark? But in spite of his uneasiness, Pio stepped to within three feet of Amanzio who had picked the bent tapered candle from the floor and was now trying in vain to straighten it. “I’ve never seen you before,” Pio said in his gruffest tone. “Tell me the truth; why are you here?”
Placing the still-bent candle back in its holder on the altar, Fra Amanzio sighed. When he turned and stared into Pio’s eyes, the priest noticed tears beginning to spill down the novice’s bony cheeks and onto his sparsely bearded chin. “Tell me, figlio mio, my son,” Pio said softly, his former uneasiness and frustration replaced by compassion, “why are you here?” The priest thought he knew the answer because lately the souls of the dead visiting him from Purgatory and asking for his prayers had outnumbered the hundreds of living persons who flocked to Pio for his help and intercession. And never a day passed that he didn’t pray for the souls in Purgatory in obedience to the inscription over one of the friary’s cell doors: “Pray for the souls in Purgatory; they did not have the wisdom to make good use of their talent.”
The novice knelt on one knee before Pio, gently grasped the stigmatic’s gloved hand, and tenderly kissed it. “I’ve come from Purgatory,” began the novice, “and I’m doing my penance here.” Sniffling back his tears and standing up, he studied Pio’s bearded face and, obviously sensing the priest’s change of attitude, continued, “When I was a novice at the friary of St. Francis of Assisi near Sant’ Elia a Pianisi I was assigned Sacristan duties, but I failed to do them well; I was often careless and so made lots of mistakes.”
Padre Pio struggled not to grin as he pointed at the bent tapered candle that drooped in its holder on the altar. “You mean like breaking candles and vases?” Pio then pointed to the ceramic fragments the novice had carefully piled up on the floor beside the altar.
“Yes,” the novice whispered in a voice filled with regret as he stared at the evidence. Glancing again at Pio’s still-sober face he said in a voice hoarse with emotion, “With Our Lord’s permission I’ve come here to ask for your prayers, Padre Pio. If you’ll offer up your prayers, sufferings, and especially a Mass for me, I’ll be allowed to go to Heaven to see the face of God and to share in the blessedness of eternal life.” New tears had begun to course down Amanzio’s gaunt cheeks.
No longer tempted to grin or chuckle, Pio felt the young novice’s inner pain. “Of course, figlio mio, of course.”
And Fra Amanzio disappeared.
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