Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
The boy from Pietrelcina
Francesco was born in the small Italian village of Pietrelcina on 25 May 1887. His parents, Grazio Forgione and Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio, were peasant farmers, but they recognised that their son was close to God.
When he was only five years old, he solemnly consecrated himself to Jesus. It is said that he often spoke with Our Lord, Our Lady and his guardian angel, who defended him against attacks by the devil.
He joined the Capuchin Franciscans at the age of fifteen, and took the name Pio with his religious vows. After seven years of study he was ordained to the priesthood in 1910.
The wounds that faded
During the same month he was ordained, Padre Pio was praying in the chapel when Our Lord and His Blessed Mother appeared and gave him the Stigmata. However, the wounds soon faded and then disappeared.
“I do want to suffer, even to die of suffering,” Padre Pio told Our Lady, “but all in secret.”
It is worth sitting with that sentence. He had been given the wounds of Our Lord, in the month of his ordination, at twenty-three years of age. His response was to ask that nobody be able to see them.
Soon after, he experienced the first of his spiritual ecstasies.
Five rules for a soul
Pio was in the military for a short time, but was discharged due to poor health. Upon his return to the monastery, he became a spiritual director.
He had five rules for spiritual growth: weekly confession, daily Communion, spiritual reading, meditation, and examination of conscience.
There is nothing in that list an ordinary Catholic cannot do. That is rather the point of it. The most famous mystic of the twentieth century directed souls by way of the confessional, the Communion rail, and a quarter of an hour with a book.
He often advised, “Pray, Hope and Don't Worry.”
The visible Stigmata
In 1918 he offered himself as a victim for the end of the war. On the 20th of September that year, Padre Pio received the visible Stigmata, the five wounds of Christ in his hands, his feet and his side.
This time they did not fade. He carried them for the rest of his life, and he died on the 23rd of September 1968, fifty years and three days after they appeared.
By 1933 the holy priest was recognised by the Church, and by 1934 he had attracted thousands of pilgrims who attended his Masses and frequented his confessional.
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The man in the friary at night
Padre Pio said of San Giovanni Rotondo: “As many souls of the dead come up this road to the monastery as souls of the living.”
He meant it plainly. One night, while praying alone, he opened his eyes to find an old man standing in the room. In his own testimony he wrote that he could not imagine how the man could have entered the friary at that hour, since every door was locked.
He asked him who he was and what he wanted.
The man answered that his name was Pietro Di Mauro, son of Nicola, and that he had died in that friary on the 18th of September 1908, in cell number four, when the building was still a poorhouse. He had fallen asleep in bed with a lighted cigar. The mattress caught fire and he died a terrible death. He was still in purgatory. He needed a Mass to be freed, and God had permitted him to come and ask.
Padre Pio told him to rest assured, and that he would offer Mass for his liberation the next day.
The man left. The next day Padre Pio made enquiries, and found that a man of that name had died in that place on that date in 1908. Everything was confirmed, and the Mass was offered.
Viva Padre Pio
One night in 1944 the friars heard loud voices downstairs shouting “Viva Padre Pio!”
The superior, Padre Raffaele da S. Elia a Pianisi, sent the doorkeeper, Fra Gerardo da Deliceto, to let the visitors out and lock up properly. Fra Gerardo went down, found nobody at all, and the door was double locked as it was every night.
He went back and reported it. Padre Raffaele, puzzled, went straight to Padre Pio and asked whether he knew anything about it.
Without the least agitation or surprise, Padre Pio answered: “Oh! Those were soldiers who had died on the battleground, and came to thank me for their salvation.”
The friar at the altar
Padre Pio told this one to a fellow priest, and it is the story of his that is hardest to put down.
“One night I was alone in the choir and I saw a friar cleaning the altar late at night.
“I asked him to go to bed since it was so late. He said: I'm a friar like you. I did my novitiate here. When assigned to take care of the altar, I passed in front of the Tabernacle many times without making the proper reverence. For this sin I am in Purgatory, and the Lord sent me to you. You decide how much longer I have to suffer in those flames.
“I told him he must remain in Purgatory until the Mass in the morning. To which he responded, Cruel, and disappeared.
“I still have a wound in my heart. I could have sent him immediately to Paradise, instead he had to stay one more night in the flames of Purgatory.”
A man who bore the wounds of Christ in his body for fifty years said that the wound he still felt was that one.
The flower Jesus picked
Carmela Marocchino's brother, Padre Vittore da Canosa, died suddenly on 29 January 1958. Carmela asked Padre Pio why the death had come so fast.
He answered her with an image rather than an explanation. “Do you know what Jesus did regarding your brother? Jesus went into the garden, and there were many flowers, and one was more beautiful than the others. He leaned on the most beautiful and picked it.”
She asked whether her brother was saved. “Yes, but we need to pray.”
She asked again on the 29th of July. “My daughter, we priests are more responsible in front of God. Let's continue praying.”
She asked a third time, on the 29th of December 1958. This time he told her: “He is in Paradise.”
Eleven months of asking the same question, and a priest who would not give her the easy answer until it was true.
The House for the Alleviation of Suffering
Before his death, Padre Pio orchestrated and oversaw the building of the House for the Alleviation of Suffering, a 350-bed medical and religious centre at San Giovanni Rotondo.
A friar who owned nothing built a hospital on a mountainside, in a poor town, because the sick were already coming and there was nowhere to put them.
The last Mass
On 23 September 1968, Padre Pio said his final Mass, renewed his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and died in his cell after suffering grave physical decline.
He was canonised on 16 June 2002 by Pope John Paul II. An estimated 300,000 people attended the canonisation ceremony.
The wounds he had asked Our Lady to hide in 1910, and carried in the open from 1918, were gone from his body when he died.
What you can do today
Take his five rules and start with one of them this week. Weekly confession is the one most of us have let go.
Have a Mass offered for somebody who has died. Every story above turns on the same thing: a Mass said for a soul who could not ask for it themselves.
Pray the Rosary. Padre Pio was rarely without his and called it his weapon.
And write down what you would ask him for. Thousands of people did exactly that in his lifetime, in letters he read and prayed over, and a great many of them received what they had asked for.
A prayer to Saint Padre Pio
Beloved Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who bore on your body the signs of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, you took the Cross to the ends of the world while enduring the physical and moral sufferings that scourged your body in a continuous martyrdom. We beg you to pray to God for us, that each of us may accept the crosses of our lives, great and small, so that everyone may turn their own suffering into a safe bond that binds us to eternal life.
Saint Padre Pio, pray for us.
References
1. America Needs Fatima - Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, 29 April 2015. The date of the visible Stigmata is given here as 20 September 1918, following the standard accounts.
2. America Needs Fatima - Stories of the Supernatural from Padre Pio, 14 August 2019.
3. America Needs Fatima - Novena and Prayers to Saint Padre Pio for the closing prayer.
Last updated: 4 September 2026 09:54