The Mysteries of Padre Pio

Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was born on May of 1887 and he died on September or 1968 in Italy. He is mostly known by being more than a priest, he was also a stigmatist and mystic. Padre Pio became famous mainly due to experiencing stigmata for the most part of his life. Stigmata is a phenomenon where a person presents body wounds, scars and pain in the same body location that corresponds to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus. Padre Pio was beatified in 1999 and canonized in 2002 by the Pope John Paul II. There is a sanctuary of Saint Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo, in Foggia, Italy.

Padre Pio’s family was deeply religious, as well as the town where he grew up (Pietrelcina). When Padre Pio was a child, he used to become ill several times, suffering from Gastroenteritis when he was 6 years old and typhoid fever when he was 10 years old. Padre Pio reports that he experienced visions and ecstasies often times. Also, when he was 17 years old, he fell ill, experiencing exhaustion, loss of appetite and migraines. It has been reported that during prayers when ill, Pio appeared to become absent, and one of Pio’s fellow friars claimed to see him in ecstasy and levitating above the ground (at that point I would have run for my life or faint).

If you are interested on one of the most important lessons of Padre Pio, you must perform meditation and self-examination twice daily: in the morning as preparation to face the day, and in the evening as retrospection. He compared weekly confession to dusting a room weekly as well. After WWI, Padre Pio’s closer circle attest that he began to manifest spiritual capacities, such as levitation, healing people and bilocation (being at two places at the same time). He also experienced an incredible capacity for abstinence from nourishment and sleep. Padre Pio was able to subsist for 20 days on only communion wafers. Believe me, I have tried the fasting diet for a month, I lost only 2 pounds and all my motivation to keep on so. Going back to Pio, he also had the gift of speaking in tongues and read hearts.

But there is also controversy. It seems that Padre Pio had a positive attitude towards Mussolini (Urte Krass, 2010), and a clerical-fascist mixture developed around Padre Pio as it is described by Emanuele Brunatto, a Padre Pio biographer who mediated between Pio and the Italian fascist movement. The Vatican imposed sanctions on Pio on 1920s because they wanted to reduce publicity about him and his stigmata, and he was forbidden to answering letters, saying mass in public and blessing people, so he was relocated to a convent in northern Italy.

The first medical examination made to Padre Pio’s wounds was in 1919. The pathologist concluded that it was skin necrosis that was not healing even when using iodine tincture. The second medical examinations in 1920 was made by a physician that described the wounds as cruciform an giving a benevolent verdict of the stigmata. Padre Pio was also evaluated by a psychiatrist in 1920. The psychiatrist concluded the following: “He is a man of restricted field of knowledge. Presents low psychic energy, monotonous ideas and little volition”. The psychiatrist also judged Pio of possible suggestion unconsciously planted by Father Benedetto in the weak mind of Padre Pio, which produced manifestations of psitacism (Speech or writing that is mechanical and repetitive), which are typical of hysteric minds.

The same psychiatrist evaluated Padre Pio again in 1925, and he suggested that his wounds were self-inflicted because the wounds showed erosion caused by some sort of caustic substance. The psychiatrist judged Padre Pio one more time as having limited mental abilities, but he also described him as a good priest, meek, calm and quiet but due to his mental deficiency (ouch! How rude!). But going back to his wounds, Padre Pio felt terrified by the stigmatas, and he begged to god to stop. He also wrote on one of his letters to Padre Agostino that he did not wish the pain to be removed, only the wounds because they were an unbearable humiliation for him. Padre Pio experienced the reappearance of stigmata for 50 years, until the end of his life. People described that the blood flowing from the wounds smelled like perfume or flower. Padre Pio often used mitten or black coverings to cover his hand and feet because he felt embarrassed.

In a letter to Padre Benedetto in October of 1918, Pio described the following about the stigmata:

“On the morning of the 20th of last month, in the choir, after I had celebrated Mass, I yielded to a drowsiness similar to a sweet sleep. [...] I saw before me a mysterious person similar to the one I had seen on the evening of 5 August. The only difference was that his hands and feet and side were dripping blood. This sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable. I thought I should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart which was about to burst out of my chest. The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands, feet and side were dripping blood. Imagine the agony I experienced and continue to experience almost every day. The heart wound bleeds continually, especially from Thursday evening until Saturday. Dear Father, I am dying of pain because of the wounds and the resulting embarrassment I feel deep in my soul. I am afraid I shall bleed to death if the Lord does not hear my heartfelt supplication to relieve me of this condition. Will Jesus, who is so good, grant me this grace? Will he at least free me from the embarrassment caused by these outward signs? I will raise my voice and will not stop imploring him until in his mercy he takes away, not the wound or the pain, which is impossible since I wish to be inebriated with pain, but these outward signs which cause me such embarrassment and unbearable humiliation...the pain was so intense that I began to feel as if I were dying on the cross”

One of the most curious things about Pio’s wounds is the fact that they never seem to have become infected. Sometimes they seemed to be healing but they would reappear eventually. Alberto Caserta took X-Rays of Pio’s hands in 1954 without finding any abnormality. Some critics accused Pio of faking stigmata’s. A cousin of a local pharmacist at Foggia testified that the young Pio bought once 4 grams of carbolic acid in 1919, but some catholic clerics dismissed the charges because the substance was used as shots administered by a priest as a sterilizing agent due to the shortage of doctors.

Also, one of the spookiest facts is that Padre Pio reported engaging in physical combat with Satan and his minions, from which he suffered extensive bruising on his body. The day that Padre Pio died, Maria Esperanza de Bianchini, a servant of god from Venezuela reported that he appeared to her in a vision to tell her goodbye and that his time was come, it was her turn. Her husband was able to see how her wife’s face transformed into the face of Padre Pio. After this, they found out that Padre Pio died. Witnesses say that after this, they saw Maria levitating in Mass and engaging in bilocation.

Padre Pio also experienced what is called transverberation, which is understood as the “piercing of the heart” which indicates the union of love with God. After he felt this pain on his side, he spent 7 weeks on spiritual unrest that is described in a letter from Padre Pio to Padre Benedetto in 1918. Padre Pio wrote the following:

“While I was hearing the boys’ confessions on the evening of the 5th [August] I was suddenly terrorized by the sight of a celestial person who presented himself to my mind’s eye. He had in his hand a sort of weapon like a very long sharp-pointed steel blade which seemed to emit fire. At the very instant that I saw all this, I saw that person hurl the weapon into my soul with all his might. I cried out with difficulty and felt I was dying. I asked the boy to leave because I felt ill and no longer had the strength to continue. This agony lasted uninterruptedly until the morning of the 7th. I cannot tell you how much I suffered during this period of anguish. Even my entrails were torn and ruptured by the weapon, and nothing was spared. From that day on I have been mortally wounded. I feel in the depths of my soul a wound that is always open and which causes me continual agony.”

When it comes to his miracles, in 1962, Pope John Paul II (not the pope at the time) asked Padre Pio to Pray for a woman who was his friend in Poland that was suffering from cancer. The woman’s cancer found to be in spontaneous remission, something that doctors could not explain. Another miracle was the case of Gemma di Giorgio, a girl that was born blind with no pupils, and after visiting Padre Pio, she gained her sight, even when she did not had pupils. Adding to this, Giovanni Savino and his wife Rosa were devoted of Padre Pio. In 1949, Padre Pio blessed him and told him “Courage Giovanni, I am praying to the Lord that you won’t be killed”. Padre Pio repeated this message to him for two days. On the third day, a charge of dynamite blew up on Giovanni’s face. His eyes were full of foreign bodies. He lost his right eye, and doctors felt that they could save his left eye, so Padre Pio asked everyone to pray for him. Weeks later, Giovanni smelled a sweet fragrance and felt three slaps on his forehead, and suddenly he was able to see, but actually from his right eye!. Giovanni died 25 years later, and he literally saw without having eyes. The ophthalmologist that evaluated Giovanni turned into Catholicism after this happened. Something very curious about his miraculous healings is the fact that the damaged organs remained damaged, but would function perfectly after his intervention.

Padre Pio also had the power of converting people into Catholicism. One of the best examples is the one of Cesare Festa, who was a freemason that visited Padre Pio. They engaged in conversation and Padre Pio took him by the hand and he started talking about God’s goodness and Festa fell to his knees and renounced freemasonry. There are much more miracles attributed to Padre Pio that you can find online, and there are also many different books and biographies that describe his miracles and stigmata with much detail.

Padre Pio died in 1968 when he was 81 years old. Till the end, Padre Pio repeated the words “Jesus, Mary” and he also said that he saw two mothers, and his last whisper was “Maria”.

After his death, the people that stayed with Padre Pio evidenced the fact that the stigmata had completely disappeared without scars. In 1999 John Paul II declared him blessed, and in 2002 he was finally declared a saint. On 2008, the body of Pio was exhumed from his crypt, 40 years after his death, and a church statement described his body as in fair condition. Also, the stigmata wounds were not visible anymore. Saint Pio is known as the patron saint of civil defense volunteers, and less officially the patron saint of stress relief, so I think Padre Pio might be useful at these uncertain times indeed!

So, Padre Pio’s Stigmata was real or not? Were his miracles actually coming from his power to heal or is it from some sort of psychological convincement that he can heal you? At the end, I believe that it doesn’t matter, as long as people is healing. Even if this is actually a phenomenon of suggestion, is still a positive and graceful thing that we can work miracles in our minds for sake of our own body; and if they are actually miracles, what a wonderful thing it is as well!