Padre Pio

Francesco Forgione was born on 25 May 1887 in Pietrelcina, in the province of Benevento in the Campania region of southern Italy, the son of Grazio Mario Forgione, a peasant farmer, and Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio. He was baptized the following day in the parish church of Sant'Anna. Raised in a devout Catholic peasant household, he showed an early inclination toward religious life and later recounted childhood experiences of visions of Jesus, Mary, and his guardian angel, as well as of diabolical attacks. After limited formal schooling, he entered the Capuchin novitiate at Morcone on 6 January 1903 and received the name Pio, in honor of Pope Saint Pius I. He made simple vows in 1904 and solemn profession in 1907, then continued studies for the priesthood despite chronic poor health.

He was ordained a priest on 10 August 1910 in the cathedral of Benevento. Recurring illness, including respiratory disease, led to periods of convalescence at home in Pietrelcina and to interruptions in his assignments. During the First World War he was conscripted into the Italian army medical corps but was repeatedly found unfit for service and discharged. In September 1916 he was sent to the Capuchin friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie at San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia, which became his permanent home. On 20 September 1918, while praying in the choir of the friary church, he reported receiving the stigmata, wounds corresponding to those of the crucified Christ on his hands, feet, and side. The wounds remained visible and bled periodically for half a century, disappearing only shortly before his death. They made him an object of intense popular devotion and of prolonged ecclesiastical scrutiny.

Padre Pio's daily ministry consisted above all of the celebration of Mass, often prolonged and emotionally intense, and of hearing confessions for many hours. Pilgrims attributed to him extraordinary gifts, including bilocation, prophecy, miraculous healings, and the ability to read the consciences of penitents. Church authorities, particularly the Holy Office, investigated the stigmata and his conduct; from the early 1920s into the 1930s he was at times forbidden to say Mass publicly, to preach, or to hear the confessions of women, and visitors were restricted. These measures were gradually relaxed, and by the later decades of his life he was widely venerated. In 1940 he began fundraising for a hospital, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (Home for the Relief of Suffering), which opened in San Giovanni Rotondo in 1956 and developed into a major research and treatment center. He also promoted prayer groups that spread beyond Italy.

He died in the friary at San Giovanni Rotondo on 23 September 1968, aged eighty-one. Enormous crowds attended his funeral. Pope John Paul II, who had visited him as a young priest, beatified him on 2 May 1999 and canonized him on 16 June 2002. His liturgical feast is 23 September. Originally interred in the crypt of Santa Maria delle Grazie, his body was exhumed in 2008 and is now enshrined in the large Sanctuary of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina at San Giovanni Rotondo, among the most frequented pilgrimage destinations in the Catholic world. He is invoked as patron of Pietrelcina, of civil defence volunteers, of adolescents, and of those suffering from stress.