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!
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