St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio)

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968), known throughout the world as Padre Pio, was a Capuchin Franciscan priest whose life of prayer, suffering, and tireless ministry in the confessional made him one of the most beloved saints of the twentieth century. Born Francesco Forgione on May 25, 1887, in the southern Italian town of Pietrelcina, he grew up in a devout farming family and entered the Capuchin novitiate in 1903, taking the religious name Pio. He was ordained a priest in 1910. From 1916 until his death, Padre Pio lived at the friary of Our Lady of Grace in San Giovanni Rotondo, on the Gargano peninsula. On September 20, 1918, while praying before a crucifix, he received the stigmata, visible wounds corresponding to the wounds of the crucified Christ. He bore them, with accompanying pain, for fifty years, and they were examined repeatedly by physicians. Reports of the stigmata and of other extraordinary gifts drew enormous crowds, and also careful scrutiny from Church authorities, who for a period in the 1920s and 1930s restricted his public ministry. He accepted these limitations with obedience and without public complaint. The heart of Padre Pio's apostolate was the confessional, where he often spent ten or more hours a day reconciling penitents who came from across Italy and far beyond. He celebrated Mass with intense devotion, and his counsel, sometimes blunt and sometimes tender, converted countless souls. He encouraged the formation of prayer groups that continue around the world, and in 1956 he opened the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (Home for the Relief of Suffering), a major hospital he founded at San Giovanni Rotondo as a work of Christian charity toward the sick. Padre Pio died on September 23, 1968, shortly after the fiftieth anniversary of receiving the stigmata; witnesses reported that the wounds had healed completely by the time of his death. Devotion to him spread rapidly, and Pope John Paul II, who had visited him as a young priest, beatified him in 1999 and canonized him on June 16, 2002, before one of the largest crowds in the history of canonizations. His feast is celebrated on September 23, and he is invoked as a patron of adolescents and of civil defense volunteers. His body rests in the Shrine of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina at San Giovanni Rotondo, adjacent to the modern pilgrimage church designed by Renzo Piano, one of the most visited shrines in the Catholic world.