(C.D. Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte, NC 2001). Used with permission.

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For help making a good confession

Blessed Padre Pio Forgione (1887-1968)

Feast Day: September 23

Who better to invoke for the grace of making a good confession than Blessed padre Pio? Every day for fifty years he heard confessions from morning until night, read hearts, revealed to sinners their most secret sins, and brought countless souls back to God. A calculation made in 1967, the year before he died, estimated that Padre Pio heard 25,000 confessions a year.

Pio Forgione was born on May 25, 1887, in the village of Pietrelcina northeast of Naples. His parents, Grazio Forgione and Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio Forgione, were peasants who had a small cottage with a dirt floor in the village and five acres they cultivated outside the town. The day after his birth they carried their infant son to the Church of Santa Anna where he was christened Francesco. {tab=Article}

The Forgiones were a devout family. On Sundays and holy days, most of the men of the village loitered outside the church while was being said, but not Grazio. He attended Mass with his family, received the sacraments frequently, and made a habit of visiting the Blessed sacrament on his way to and from the fields.

In August 1875 Grazio took Francesco on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Pellegrine the Martyr at Altavilla Irpina. They were praying in the church when an ear-splitting scream drew everyone’s attention. Up the Aisle came a woman carrying her son—deformed, retarded, and unable to speak. She pushed through the crowd of worshippers until she stood before the statue of the saint where she pleaded with St. Pellegrine to work a miracle. Francesco and many others in the church prayed with her, but when nothing happened the distraught woman dumped her child at the statue’s feet crying, “If you won’t cure him, then you can keep him.” Then she turned and headed for the door. A moment later the child stood up, called his mother, and ran down the Aisle after her. The crowd in the church erupted in an emotional frenzy. Padre Pio often told this story and always with tears in his eyes.

In 1903 when he was 16 years old Francesco entered the Capuchin monastery at Morcone. He took the name of Pio—Pius in English. Six years later when Brother Pio was ordained a priest he went home to Pietrelcina to celebrate his first Mass.

In 1910 Padre Pio, then only 23 years old, began to experience sharp pains in his hands and feet. He endured the mysterious affliction in silence until at last he admitted to his spiritual director that for over year he had been experiencing what he called “invisible stigmata.” Padre Pio’s Capuchin superiors sent him to their house in Venafro to undergo a series of medical examinations. At this time he admitted that he also felt the pain of Christ’s crown of thorns and of his scourging, but there still was no physical manifestation of these pains.

Then on August 5, 1918, Padre Pio experienced a mystical event known as transverberation. In a vision he saw someone he described as “a mysterious person.” Suddenly Padre Pio felt as if he had been pierced by a lance, and a wound appeared in his side that bled continuously.

On September 20 Padre Pio was sitting in the chapel choir after Mass when he had another vision. The same mysterious person appeared to him, but this time the figure was bleeding from his hands and feet. When the frightening apparition disappeared Padre Pio found blood dripping from wounds in his hands, feet and side. He wrote to his spiritual director, “Dear Father, I dying of pain because of the wounds and the resulting embarrassment.... I am afraid I shall bleed to death if the Lord does hear my heartfelt supplication to relieve me of this condition.” The wounds did not go away; they remained visible and seeped blood for the next 50 years. Initially the Capuchins did not try to keep Padre Pio and his wounds out of the public eye. Thanks to photographers and the mass media of the 20th century Padre Pio’s image and story spread throughout Italy and then around the globe. As word of Padre Pio’s stigmata spread, thousands descended on the town of San Giovanni Rotondo near Foggia in southern Italy, everyone of them hoping for a glimpse of the friar’s wounded hands. Immense crowds attended Padre Pio’s Masses which, because he often went into ecstatic trances at the altar, could last two or three hours.

Meanwhile the Vatican sent Padre Pio to a series of medical specialists. There was no denying that the wounds were on Padre Pio’s body, the question was what had made them appear. The Church has centuries of experience with people who claimed private revelations and signs of divine favor. Some of these men and women proved to be great saints. Many more were delusional or even frauds. Some had been victims of their families, their spiritual directors, or their religious community who hoped to bring notoriety to themselves by being connected with a “stigmatist.” The fact that the Capuchins had permitted great crowds to see Padre Pio made the always cautious Roman Curia suspicious.

After studying Padre Pio’s case Cardinal Merry del Vall sent the Capuchins these instructions: Padre Pio was to be kept under observation; he was not to say Mass at a fixed time, and it was preferable that he should Mass in private; he was not permitted to bless people, nor to show his wounds, nor to let anyone kiss them. Nearly a year later the Holy Office declared “it has not noticed any supernatural phenomenon” relating to Padre Pio and ordered the faithful to act accordingly. A few days later the Capuchin Father Provincial forbade Padre Pio to say Mass in public. The outcry from the faithful was immediate. The mayor of San Giovanni Rotondo, Francesco Morcaldi, led 5000 protesters through the streets. The demonstration nearly degenerated into a riot when some of the protesters threatened to burn down the house of the parish priest because he had testified against Padre Pio. Only the intervention of Mayor Morcaldi saved the rectory. That night a torchlight procession marched on the Capuchin monastery. The next day, Padre Pio appeared in the church to say Mass. Two weeks later the Capuchin superiors issued another order transferring Padre Pio to a monastery in Ancona on the other side of Italy and far from the near-hysterical atmosphere of San Giovanni Rotondo. That order lasted a week before pressure from the faithful once again forced the Capuchins to back down. To his credit, Padre Pio never commented on the “triumphs” of his followers over the Church authorities. All he would say was that his strange experiences made him a mystery to himself, but he hoped that they might prove to do some good for others.

The crowds continued to come to San Giovanni and many of the visitors left gifts of cash with the Capuchin friars. In 1925 Padre Pio opened a small hospital and dedicated it to an earlier great stigmatist, St. Francis of Assisi. For the rest of his life Padre Pio worked to build ever finer medical facilities in the neighborhood of San Giovanni. He achieved his greatest Ambition when he opened the House for the Relief of Suffering in 1956.

In 1931 the Holy Office took the drastic measure of suspending Padre Pio from all his pastoral functions. he was forbidden to hear confessions and he could only say Mass privately inside the friary with one altar server and no congregation. These restrictions remained in place for three years.

Then in the late 1930s a new series of troubles plagued Padre Pio and the Capuchins. Father Raffaelle of St. Elias, the Father Guardian of the friary at San Giovanni, began receiving a stream of anonymous letters accusing padre Pio of sneaking women into his cell at night. To satisfy himself that the charges were not true Father Raffaelle watched outside Padre Pio’s cell night after night. He pasted bits of paper over the door jam that would have torn if anyone had tried to go in or come of the cell—and every morning the paper was intact. Finally Father Raffaelle felt confident that these malicious letters were the work of a crank.

It is said that Padre Pio had the gift of bilocation, a supernatural ability to appear in two places at the same time. His superior Father Carmelo da Sessano told this story. One evening there was a concert at the Capuchin monastery and Padre Pio was among the friars who attended. During the intermission he folded his arms on the chair in front of him and rested his head. His brother friars assumed he was tired and did not disturb him. When the intermission was over Padre Pio sat upright and gave his attention to the rest of the performance. The next day Father Carmelo stopped to see a sick villager. He found the patient recovered and the family jubilant because Padre Pio had visited them the night before. Father Carmelo said it was not possible. Padre Pio had not gone out at all; he had attended a concert in the monastery. The family insisted that Padre Pio had come to see them, and they specified the time of his visit. It was during the intermission. Padre Pio became such a popular confessor that by 1948 it was necessary for penitents to make reservations.

In 1947 a Polish priest studying in Rome, Father Karol Wojtyla, traveled to San Giovanni to confess to Padre Pio. There is a story that Padre Pio told the young priest he would be elected {ln:Pope} and would shed his blood for Christ. While this anecdote is impossible to confirm, much more certain is another encounter Father Wojtyla had with Padre Pio. In November 1962 Wojtyla was nor Archbishop of Cracow. A friend, Wanda Poltawska, mother of four, had been diagnosed with stomach cancer; the doctors gave her 18 months to live. Archbishop Wojtyla wrote to Padre Pio asking him to pray for Wanda. On the day his friend was scheduled for surgery Archbishop Wojtyla called Wanda’s husband Andrzej to see how the operation had gone. Andrzej told him that had been no surgery: the pre-operation examination found no trace of cancer. The tumors had vanished.

On September 20, 1968, enormous crowds gathered at San Giovanni to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Padre Pio’s stigmata. The church where he said his 5 am Mass was filled with hundreds of red roses, gifts from admirers from around the globe. Although the church was packed to the doors with a congregation of 2000, and an enormous crowd stood in the square outside, no hysterical displays marred the anniversary Mass: everyone displayed profound reverence for the solemnity of the occasion. Two days later, when he was saying what would be the last Mass of his life, Padre Pio held up his hands to the congregation. The stigmata was gone. At 2:30 in the next morning, September 23, 81-year-old Padre Pio died. One hundred thousand mourners attended Padre Pio’s funeral, and an endless river of pilgrims have visited his tomb since the day of his burial. Today some 5 million faithful come every year. {tab=About Book}

Prayer to the saints is a powerful thing.

Now, with Saints for Every Occasion, readers can quickly find help for any challenge they face – no matter how large or small. Author Thomas J. Craughwell profiles 101 patron saints from various continents, cultures and times – from saints who were contemporaries of Christ, to modern patrons like Padre Pio and Faustina Kowalska. Each saint lived heroically in difficult times and circumstances, providing powerful examples of how to turn almost any obstacle into a source of grace. Along with old favorites such as St. Anthony and St. Jude, Craughwell offers patrons for specifically modern concerns, including, for example, saints to watch over astronauts, internet users and environmental activists. Beautifully illustrated and entertainingly told, Saints for Every Occasion features 101 patron saints readers will seek out time and again.

“An excellent resource for home and classroom use.” – Publisher’s Weekly {/tabs}