Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
Priest and Stigmatist
(1887–1968)
Saint Padre Pio, born Francesco Forgione on May 25, 1887, at Pietrelcina in the Campania region of Italy, is one of the most beloved and widely venerated saints of the twentieth century. He entered the Capuchin Franciscans at the age of fifteen and was ordained a priest in 1910. From his earliest years as a priest he experienced intense physical suffering that doctors could not explain, and he offered this suffering explicitly to God for the conversion of sinners.
On September 20, 1918, while making his thanksgiving after Mass in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie at San Giovanni Rotondo, he received the stigmata, the visible wounds of Christ's Passion, in his hands, feet, and side. These wounds bled regularly and caused him continuous suffering until shortly before his death fifty years later. He was the first stigmatised priest in the history of the Church, and the phenomenon drew enormous attention from the faithful, from sceptics, and from Church authorities alike.
The Holy Office subjected him to multiple investigations over the decades, and at various points restrictions were placed on his public ministry, which he accepted with complete submission. Through all these trials he maintained his characteristic combination of apostolic fire and childlike simplicity. He spent up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional, and pilgrims came from across the world to receive the sacrament from his hands. He is reported to have read souls with supernatural insight, knowing the sins of penitents before they confessed them.
He founded the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, House of the Relief of Suffering, a large modern hospital at San Giovanni Rotondo, and prayer groups that now number over three thousand worldwide. He died on September 23, 1968, after celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his stigmata. His wounds disappeared at the moment of his death. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1999 and canonised in 2002. His feast is celebrated on September 23rd.