Saint Padre Pio: Man of Hope

INTRODUCTION

Ifirst met Padre Pio in 1967, the year before his death. He was old and very ill. As a journalist, I went to his home in San Giovanni Rotondo on assignment, and I had the opportunity to speak with him on two occasions. I was extremely impressed, not so much by the stories of miracles that people told about him but by the extraordinary moral strength that emanated from his whole being.

It was hard for me to watch him walking in the sacristy or the corridors of the monastery, bent over, dragging his swollen feet, and holding on to the walls so that he would not fall down. His suffering was tremendous, but he bore it without complaining as he continued to give himself to those who needed him. When he would lift his head and look around, his big eyes looked like they were burning, not from pain but from a goodness that he could not contain.

In 1969, the year after Padre Pio’s death, I wrote a long article for a newspaper on his life and his work. Rumors began to circulate that the economic empire that he had created in San Giovanni Rotondo was on the verge of collapsing. Many people prophesied that within a short time no one would remember the Capuchin friar with the stigmata.

A group of Friends of Padre Pio, represented by Giuseppe Pagnossin from Padua, one of Padre Pio’s spiritual sons, handed me a file that was chock-full of some very interesting, unpublished documents. There were thousands and thousands of them, arranged and bound together in volumes. Studying these documents, I discovered something about Padre Pio that few people knew: he had endured incredibly enormous suffering throughout his life, consisting of more persecution, humiliation, accusations, slanders, trials, and condemnations than one can imagine.

From that time on, I have continued to take a deep interest in Padre Pio, gathering together other documents that I have now arranged in this volume. This book does not claim to be a critical biography. Rather, I have sketched a chronicle of Padre Pio’s life, based mainly on the direct testimony of people who knew him thoroughly.

In general, when people write about Padre Pio, they tend to dwell on the penitential aspect of his life, thereby giving a somewhat dark and medieval tinge to his personality. But this is not really the case. Padre Pio was and is a man of hope. Throughout his life, in the midst of the most difficult trials, he always looked to the future with a spirit of optimism, faith, and love. He was a man who believed in progress. From the outset his clinic for the sick was on the vanguard of medicine. In his private life he was never a slave to rules or regulations that made no sense. He undertook colossal endeavors with a faith that bore miracles.

Padre Pio loved people. He wept and suffered with those who were afflicted, yet he laughed with those who were happy. Although he was a tender and affectionate man, he was often brusque with people, even with sick little children. One of his fellow friars, Fr. Pellegrino, once complained to him about this. In reply Padre Pio said: I act like that so that I don’t let myself be overcome with emotion. Seeing people suffer is enough to bring me to tears, and then I would no longer be able to continue my ministry.

From a spiritual perspective, there is no dispute regarding Padre Pio’s stature. Cardinal Siri once made the following remarks in an interview with me: With the stigmata which he bore throughout his life and with the other physical and moral sufferings he endured, Padre Pio calls our attention to the body of Christ as a means of salvation. Jesus died on the cross for us, and the entire theology of redemption rests on this truth, one of the principal tenets of our faith. This truth is so important that, throughout history whenever men have forgotten it or have sought to find it, God has always intervened with events, deeds, and miracles. In our time the temptation to forget about the reality of the body of Christ is enormous. And God has sent us this man with the task of calling us back to the truth.

The life of this man was characterized by some of the phenomena typically associated with the paranormal world: bilocation, levitation, mind reading, premonitions, and clairvoyance. When his friend Angelo Battisti once questioned him about these things, Padre Pio told him: Angelo, they are a mystery for me too.

Since his death, Padre Pio’s renown has continued to grow. Some two hundred monuments are dedicated to him. There are thousands of prayer groups around the world that draw their inspiration from him. He has faithful admirers and followers, even among Protestants, Buddhists, and Hindus. He is a man who will always be loved by people.

ONE

Pietrelcina, May 25, 1887

When people talk about Padre Pio, foremost in their thoughts is San Giovanni Rotondo, the small town in the Gargano Mountains where the Capuchin friar with the stigmata lived for some fifty years. However, he was really born in Pietrelcina, a village in the province of Benevento.

His real name was Francesco Forgione but, following the custom of the Capuchin friars, he became Padre Pio of Pietrelcina upon entering the order. Pietrelcina is a little country town situated 1,150 feet above sea level. Its origins are quite old, and historians have traced its history back to the time of the Romans. However, the current layout of the town follows a model that was developed in the Middle Ages: it is built around a baronial castle which is standing to this day, rising another three hundred feet from an enormous cliff overlooking the Pantaniello River.

The old part of town is built around the castle, and the houses there are attached to the cliff. Their entrances open out to narrow, winding streets paved with cobblestones. The houses are constructed of limestone. Their walls are unplastered, and cracks can be observed in the stone.

Francesco Forgione was born in one of the oldest of these houses, number 27 on the narrow lane called Storto Valle, on Wednesday, May 25, 1887, at five o’clock in the afternoon.

The house in which the future Padre Pio first saw the light of day consisted of a single room that was about thirty square feet in size. It had a dirt floor and a ceiling constructed of wooden planks. Light flowed in from one small window about sixteen inches square.

Francesco’s father, Grazio, was twenty-six years old; his mother, Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio, was twenty-eight. They were married on June 8, 1881, and already had three children when Francesco was born: Michele, born in 1882, Francesco, born in 1884, who lived for only nineteen days, and Amalia, who was born in 1885 and who died a month after Padre Pio was born. Three children were born afterward: Felicita in 1889, Pellegrina in 1892, and Grazia, who later became Sister Pia, a Brigittine sister, in 1894.

Grazio Forgione, a native of Pietrelcina, was a peasant man who owned a little land but was forced to emigrate twice to America in order to support his family. Those who knew him described him as a man of medium height, with bright eyes, a lean physique, happy, strong, clever, active, straightforward, quick to reply, rough-mannered, hurried, and cordial. He was illiterate.

Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio, who was also a native of Pietrelcina, was a member of the working class but had the bearing of a woman from a good family. People in Pietrelcina remember her as having a slender figure, an elegant stride, and in spite of her great poverty, as always being well-dressed with a fresh, clean, white scarf on her head, as was the custom of peasant women of the time.

Mamma Peppa, as Maria Giuseppa was called, later recalled what the midwife said to her when she lifted up her newborn baby son: Peppa, the child was born wrapped in a white veil, and that’s a good sign: he will be great and fortunate.

Francesco was baptized at St. Anne’s Church at six o’clock on May 26, 1887, the day after his birth. Fr. Nicolantonio Orlando, the priest who was in charge of parish finances, officiated at the ceremony. The newborn child was called Francesco, at his mother’s explicit request, since she had great devotion to St. Francis of Assisi.

We know from what his mother and father remember that Francesco was a healthy and lively baby. However, he had a shrill cry and often screamed during the night, disturbing poor Grazio’s sleep after he had worked hard all day long.

One night his father lost his patience. He took the child and shook him so hard that he fell to the ground. Was a devil born in my house instead of a Christian? he cried. The angry wife scolded her husband and picked up the child. You killed my son, she said. But nothing happened to the baby, and from that night on he did not disturb Grazio’s sleep again.

I never goofed off in my life, Padre Pio once said when recalling his childhood. I was an unsalted piece of macaroni, he observed, referring to his submissiveness and reserve.

As he was growing, Mamma Peppa reminisced, he never did anything bad. He never did anything on a whim. He always obeyed me and his father. Every morning and night he would go off to the church to visit Jesus and Mary. During the day, he never went out to play with his playmates. Many times I said to him, ‘Franci, go out and play a while.’ He would refuse, saying, ‘I don’t want to because they swear.’

According to several of his contemporaries, Francesco was a quiet and reserved boy. Although he seemed aloof from the other children and their games, he was not unsociable. He was reserved without being sulky. He often prayed.

Biographies of Padre Pio are full of edifying stories from his childhood. Since these stories were gathered so many years afterward, it is difficult to ascertain how true they are. Some of them, however, have been confirmed by Padre Pio himself. Usually very reluctant to speak about himself, he often refused to share what was going on in him spiritually. But his superiors, knowing that one day it would be useful to know the truth about some of his experiences, asked him to answer out of obedience some questions about his life. Faced with such an appeal to his vow of obedience, Padre Pio could not refuse. Consequently, many of these episodes have been clarified or confirmed. Padre Pio confided some recollections to his spiritual directors, who, in turn, wrote them down; others he jotted down in his own handwriting.

From the Diary of Fr. Agostino of San Marco in Lamis, who was one of Padre Pio’s first spiritual directors, we have learned that the future servant of God had his first charismatic experiences in 1892 when he was only five years old. Ecstasies and apparitions were so frequent in his life that the young boy thought they were completely normal.

The Diary of Fr. Agostino of San Marco in Lamis was edited by Fr. Gerardo Di Flumeri and published in 1971. There he wrote: The ecstasies and the apparitions began when he was five years old, when Francesco had some thoughts and a desire to consecrate himself forever to the Lord, and they continued throughout his life. When asked why he had concealed them for so long, he answered very candidly that he never revealed them because he thought they were ordinary things that happened to everyone. In fact, one day he asked me rather naively: ‘You don’t see the Virgin Mary?’ When I told him I didn’t, he added: ‘You’re saying that out of humility.’

The visions were not only of angels and saints, but also of demons. Fr. Benedict of San Marco in Lamis recorded the following episode in his writings: The devil began to torment him when he was about four years old. The devil appeared under horrible and often threatening and frightening guises. He was such a pest in the middle of the night that he didn’t let Francesco sleep. Padre Pio himself recounted once: My mother would turn off the lights, and so many monsters would close in on me that I would cry. She would turn the lights on and I would quiet down because the monsters vanished. Once she turned them off again, I would begin to cry again because of the monsters.

Don Nicola Caruso, one of the priests in Pietrelcina, wrote: More than once Francesco told me that when he would return home from school, he would find a man on the doorstep who was dressed like a priest who didn’t want him to enter. Then Francesco would pray; a barefooted boy would appear and make the sign of the cross and the priest would disappear. Francesco would peacefully enter the house.

In order to overcome his fear of the monsters and the menacing apparitions, Francesco would subject himself to some rather unusual penitential practices for someone his age. One of his friends who was his age and who lived nearby has shared that when Francesco was nine years old, he would seldom go out and play. Instead he would read devotional books, attend Mass, and with the help of the sacristan, lock himself up in the church, exhorting his friend not to tell anyone. Then he would arrange a time with the sacristan to let him out of the church.

Padre Pio’s mother once told how she surprised Francesco one day when he was about nine years old as he was scourging himself next to his bed with an iron chain. She begged him to stop, but he just continued. She asked him, Son, why are you hitting yourself like that? Francesco answered, I have to beat myself like the Roman soldiers beat Jesus and made his shoulders bleed.

Don Giuseppe Orlando, a priest in Pietrelcina, would reprimand Francesco because instead of sleeping in the bed that his mother so lovingly prepared for him, he would lie down on the ground, using a rock as a pillow.

One day in 1896, Grazio Forgione decided to take Francesco on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Pellegrino, near Altavilla Irpina, which was about sixteen miles from Pietrelcina. They left early in the morning, riding on a donkey. The shrine was very crowded because of a fair that was being held in the town. They tied their donkey up in front of a small restaurant and went to the shrine. When they had finished praying, Grazio Forgione told his son that it was time to go, but the boy wanted to stay a while longer.

Next to Francesco a poor woman was holding a deformed child in her arms, praying, weeping, and asking for God’s mercy. Francesco was deeply moved as he watched her, and prayed and wept with her. At one point the woman, tired and exasperated of praying perhaps, flung the child on the altar, crying, Why don’t you want to heal him for me? There was a moment of silence in the church, and then a cry of joy: the child stood up, completely healed.

This event made a strong impression on little Francesco. Whenever he recalled it as an adult, tears would well up in his eyes.

In spite of these undoubtedly charismatic episodes, Francesco Forgione was also like all the other boys. Eyewitnesses have recounted other episodes in his life that show him to be completely normal and even rather carefree. When Francesco was about nine, it was his job to take some sheep to the pasture each day. There he would meet another young shepherd, Luigi Orlando, who was a little younger than he. The two friends would often wrestle for fun. Francesco would almost always pin me down, Orlando later recalled. Once I fell down and he pinned my shoulders to the ground. Then, in an effort to get him off of me, I said a dirty word. Francesco’s reaction was immediate: he let go and ran away. He never said bad words and never wanted to hear them.

When he was about ten, Francesco played a prank that deeply upset his mother. For about a month he had been sick in bed, and nothing seemed to cure him. One day his mother had to go to the fields to help with the harvest. Before leaving, she prepared an enormous plate of fried red peppers: half of it was for the workers in the field, and the other half was stored in the cupboard for the following day’s meal. As she was leaving, she told little Francesco to stay in bed and to take his medicine.

When he was alone, Francesco could not resist the sweet smell of the fried peppers. As he himself recounted, he got up and staggered to the kitchen, took them from the cupboard, and ate almost all of them. Then he went back to bed and fell asleep. When his mother returned home, she found him in a pool of sweat and redder than the peppers he had eaten. Not realizing what had happened, she was frightened and immediately called the doctor. Fortunately, the peppers, instead of making him sicker, must have purified his intestines. By the following day his fever had disappeared.

One day when talking about smoking and people who smoke, Padre Pio told the following story: When I was about ten, Uncle Pellegrino sent me to buy a cigar and a box of matches for him. When I was coming back, I stopped at the Pantaniello River. ‘Let’s see if he knows what smoking is like,’ a voice said within me. I took a match and lit the cigar. But the first puff turned my stomach. It seemed like the ground was shaking underneath me. When I felt better, I went back to the farm and told my uncle what had happened. Instead of scolding me, he burst out laughing. Since then there’s been a barrier between me and smoking.

TWO

Pio’s Early Years

On September 27, 1899, Francesco Forgione was confirmed in Pietrelcina by Bishop Donato Maria dell’Olio of Benevento. He was twelve years old. We do not know if he made his first Holy Communion on that same day, but he certainly made it sometime during the year, since no child was allowed to make his or her first Holy Communion before twelve years of age. More than once, Francesco had gone with his grandfather to ask the pastor of the parish to let him receive the Eucharist. However, his pastor did not want to break what was the tradition at the time, even though he was fully aware that the boy was well prepared to make his first Holy Communion.

Francesco’s father, Grazio Forgione, was unable to read or write but did not want his children to be illiterate like him. He had tried to send his oldest son, Michele, to school with no success. When he decided to send Francesco to school, he repeatedly promised: If you do well in your studies, you can become a monk.

At that time the sons and daughters of poor people living in the country or in the mountains could pursue further studies only if they intended to be a priest or religious. Francesco was prepared to follow such a course. Since he had to be useful to his family by working until that point in his life, he was not able to go to school on a regular basis. He had studied at different times with various self-styled teachers. His first teacher was Cosimo Scocca, a farmer who had a fifth-grade education. They were related, and Francesco called him Uncle Cosimo. His second teacher was Mandato Saginario, a tradesman who was able to teach him the letters of the alphabet. His third teacher was Fr. Domenico Tizzani, a priest with whom Francesco finished his elementary school program.

In 1901, when he was fourteen, the future Padre Pio set to work on a high school program under the direction of Angelo Caccavo. Caccavo was an open-minded and honest man who was dedicated to his vocation, but he had been heavily influenced by the Freemasons and his ideas were quite liberal. People who knew Francesco at the time all agree that he loved to study and did very well in his studies.

During the two years that he studied with Caccavo, young Francesco worked on developing thirty different themes that are preserved in a notebook to this very day. The paper in the notebook has grown yellow with time, but it is easy to read, except for a few pages where the ink has faded. From these themes, we are able to learn some interesting details about both student and teacher. Some of the titles of his themes are as follows: The Hovel of a Beggar; The Mad Dog; Autumn; Rain; The Appropriateness of Self-Control; Rewarding Good; The Wars for Italian Independence; Our King; The Shame of Dishonor. In developing these themes, Francesco showed himself to be a keen observer of the natural phenomena and the customs of his surroundings. Moreover, he displayed a marked love for history.

On September 22, 1902, Angelo Caccavo assigned him to write a paper entitled If I Were King. Here is what Francesco Forgione wrote:

O, if I were king! How many wonderful things I would wish to do. First of all, I would always want to be a religious king, as I am now and as I always hope to be. I would fight, first of all, against divorce, which so many wicked men desire, and make people respect as much as possible the sacrament of matrimony.

What happened to Julian the Apostate, who was brave, self-controlled, and studious, but who made the big mistake of denying Christianity, in which he was educated, because he decided to revive Paganism? His life was wasted because he did not attain anything but the despicable name of apostate.

Also, I would try to make a name for myself by always fighting for the path of true Christianity. Woe to the person who does not wish to follow it! I would punish him immediately, either by putting him in prison, exiling him, or even by putting him to death. My motto would be the same as Alessandro Severo’s: Don’t do unto others that which you would not want them to do to you. During my reign I would spend all my time visiting the provinces in order to improve the government there, and by building everywhere some distinguished monuments as memorials, such as city gates, roads, circuses, libraries, statues, theaters, etc. I would be gracious, humane, and observe the laws; I would travel as a simple citizen, giving audiences to everyone and dressing simply by wearing clothing made by the women back home. I would gather in my court the greatest writers. I would pay teachers of rhetoric well. I would be a patron of the arts. My motto would be that of Vespasiano: Only a friend of mankind is worthy to lead.

Three days later, he was given the following assignment: Describe a rainfall after a long drought. His report reads as follows:

Yesterday, on the horizon, the sun was shining in full splendor and was warming the earth with its burning rays. The sky was serene and tranquil when barely, but barely, a breath of wind began to blow softly from the west. But the tranquillity did not last long, because in the afternoon the sky grew dark, the sun was hidden. Creation no longer shone with a multitude of colors, and the melody of the birds could no longer be heard. Everything had changed.

It began to thunder and lightning unceasingly, and everyone was frightened. After a while, rain began to fall sharply and noisily, flooding the streets and trickling off the roofs. I went to the window to watch the drenching rain so that I wouldn’t be bored. Many raindrops fell straight down and flowed right into the middle of the street; many others quietly trickled down the sides of the walls of the houses. There were others that were more daring and they clung to the windowpanes, perhaps out of curiosity. I even observed a few that were held back by the raised edges of the sills of the windows, that seemed to creep up to the top of the edge—perhaps to measure how far the fall was. After hesitating a bit, they mustered up the courage to fall to the ground and join the thousands of other raindrops that were falling from the sky.

I saw people who were hurrying by under their soaking umbrellas, and I also saw innumerable puddles of water that were rippling from the raindrops, forming little bubbles that would disappear almost as quickly as they would appear.

At the same time, all of the water was forming little streams and rivulets that skipped around the bumps on the ground, searching for a torrent of water that would lead them out to the sea.

Reflecting on the many benefits that this water would bring to the countryside, I felt happy and content. For a long time not a single drop of rain had fallen, and the rain came just in time to refresh the air and to replenish wells and cisterns. Furthermore, it would revive the grass and the plants that had been scorched by the drought.

Francesco was happy studying with Angelo Caccavo. On July 5, 1901, he wrote to his father, who had emigrated to America: Now that I have a new teacher, I am noticing how much progress I am making from one day to the next, for which both Mother and I are extremely happy.

Francesco always had a strong affection for Caccavo. When he would write home after entering the monastery, he never failed to send his greetings, a big hug, or his fondest wishes to his teacher. On May 11, 1919, after he had received the stigmata and was famous, he wrote this letter to his former teacher: "I’m healthy, but extremely busy all day and all night because of the hundreds, even thousands, of confessions that I hear in carrying out my ministry.

"I always remember you in my humble prayers when I’m in the Lord’s presence, and only God knows how much I have implored him for your complete conversion.

I would be so happy if I could see you again and hug you one last time, which is totally impossible since I will never see my hometown again. I send greetings to everybody, and I send you a big hug, asking God’s grace to be with you and to sustain you.

Caccavo responded to his disciple’s wishes by going to see him several times in San Giovanni Rotondo. He died in 1944 at the age of seventy-five.

Francesco first thought about becoming a monk when he was a child. His mother, his pastor, and his teacher, Caccavo, were all aware of his desire. He chose the Capuchins because of his acquaintance with Brother Camillo, a young mendicant monk from the monastery in Morcone. Brother Camillo periodically visited Pietrelcina and endeared himself to everybody because of his humble and simple demeanor.

In the spring of 1902, Francesco’s Uncle Pellegrino asked the pastor of the parish, Fr. Panullo, to write to the provincial superior of the Capuchins and to inform him about Francesco’s desire. The provincial superior wrote back saying that there was no place at that moment for him in the Capuchin novitiate in Morcone.

Uncle Pellegrino advised his nephew to consider another religious order. He could choose between the monks at the Marian shrine in Montevergine with their white habits, the Redemptorists at Sant Angelo a Cupolo, or the Franciscans at Benevento. Francesco asked whether they had beards, and when he learned that they did not, he told his uncle, No, I want to wear a beard like Brother Camillo.

In the autumn of 1902, a second letter