Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, known throughout the world as Padre Pio, was a Capuchin friar and priest who for more than half a century ministered in the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia. There he drew crowds as a confessor and spiritual director, and for the sick he founded the hospital called the Home for the Relief of Suffering. The Church commemorates him on September 23, the day of his death.

He was born on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, in the Archdiocese of Benevento. His parents were Grazio Forgione and Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio. He was baptized the next day and given the name Francesco. At the age of sixteen, on January 6, 1903, he entered the Capuchin novitiate at Morcone, where he received the habit and the name Brother Pio. He made his solemn vows on January 27, 1907, and on August 10, 1910, he was ordained a priest in Benevento.

Because of poor health, he spent several years after his ordination at his family home. In September 1916 his superiors sent him to the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo, where he remained for the rest of his life. On September 20, 1918, the stigmata appeared on his body, wounds like those of Christ, which he bore for fifty years. The Italian edition of the Roman Missal calls them an outward sign of his inner union with Christ crucified.

News of the stigmata drew more and more people to the friary, and his case was examined by the Holy Office. From 1923 onward it declared several times that it found no supernatural character in the phenomena attributed to him, and it restricted his ministry. In 1931 he was left only with the celebration of Mass without the faithful present; public Mass was restored to him in 1933, and hearing confessions in 1934. He accepted these decisions in obedience. John Paul II said that obedience became for him a crucible of purification.

The heart of his ministry was Holy Mass and the confessional. Paul VI recalled that Padre Pio celebrated Mass humbly and heard confessions from morning till evening. He used to say of himself, “I am a poor friar who prays,” and he taught that prayer is the key that opens the heart of God. The Prayer Groups he founded spread throughout the world. On May 5, 1956, the hospital built on his initiative, the Home for the Relief of Suffering, was opened in San Giovanni Rotondo.

Padre Pio died in San Giovanni Rotondo on September 23, 1968, at the age of 81. Already in his lifetime he had a reputation for holiness, and after his death pilgrims from all over the world continued to come to the friary. In 1982 the Holy See gave permission to open his cause of beatification.

John Paul II, who had met him personally as a student in Rome, beatified him on May 2, 1999, and canonized him on June 16, 2002, in Saint Peter’s Square. On the same day he announced that the memorial of Saint Pio, as an obligatory memorial, would be entered in the calendar of the whole Church on September 23, the day of his birth into heaven.