Feast day: September 23

St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio)

Priest & Mystic · 1887–1968

Patron of Civil defense volunteers, adolescents, stress relief

Capuchin friar who bore the stigmata for 50 years, heard millions of confessions, and built a major hospital — while enduring suspicion, investigation, and restriction with obedience.

Francesco Forgione was born in 1887 to a poor farming family in Pietrelcina in southern Italy, and from boyhood was drawn to a life of prayer and penance. He joined the Capuchin Franciscans, took the name Pio, and was ordained a priest, though chronic illness dogged him all his life. He spent almost his entire ministry in the remote friary of San Giovanni Rotondo, which, through him, would become one of the most visited shrines in the world.

In 1918, while praying before a crucifix, he received the stigmata — the wounds of Christ's passion in his own hands, feet, and side — which he bore, bleeding and painful, for fifty years, the first priest ever known to do so. He tried to hide them and was deeply embarrassed by the attention they brought, enduring years of investigation and even suspicion from Church authorities, all of which he accepted in obedience and silence.

His real life's work was the confessional, where he sometimes spent ten or more hours a day for decades, drawing enormous crowds. Penitents told of a confessor who seemed to read their hearts and name forgotten sins, who could be stern but led countless souls back to God. Many accounts also surrounded him of bilocation, of healings, and of a mysterious fragrance.

Moved by the suffering he saw, he founded a great modern hospital beside the friary, the 'Home for the Relief of Suffering,' as a work of practical charity to match his life of prayer. He died in 1968, his stigmata vanishing without trace at the end, and was canonized in 2002 as St. Pio of Pietrelcina, one of the most beloved saints of the twentieth century.

He was banned from public ministry for years on false accusations and never once complained publicly. The Church that restricted him later canonized him.

“Pray, hope, and don't worry.”
— St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio)

Image: File:Padre Pio portrait.jpg: The original uploader was Manfredonia at Italian Wikipedia. derivative work: MisterNox (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.