Pius of Pietrelcina (1887–1968)

Biography

At the age of 5 he promised “fidelity” to Saint Francis of Assisi and the first mystical phenomena began for him, ecstasies, attacks, visions of the Lord, of the Virgin Mary, of Saint Francis, of the Guardian Angel…, which he did not communicate to anyone until 1915 because “he believed that they were ordinary things that They happened to all souls.” On January 22, 1903, he put on the Capuchin habit and received his new name: Brother Pio of Pietrelcina. He received priestly ordination in Benevento in 1910. A mysterious illness forced him to leave the convent and seek the climate and air of his native Pietrelcina until February 1916, when he joined the Capuchin fraternity of Santa Ana de Foggia. In these years, his penances, his long hours of prayer, his valiant fight against the attacks, the mystical phenomena that were repeated and to which we must add the "crowning with thorns", the "flagellation", the "sores" on his body since the month of September 1910, which, in the face of his insistent prayers to the Lord, remained invisible for a few years..., prepared him to fulfill his "very great mission" that was revealed to him in the year of his novitiate and to which he would allude in a letter. After serving the nation as a soldier for 2 years, he climbed the mountain where the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo was located with the intention of taking in the pure air of the mountain for a few days and in this convent, silent and lonely at first and bustling and very crowded later, the Lord wanted him during the last 52 years of his life. He died there and was buried there. The sores on his hands, feet and sides that bled constantly for fifty years and other extraordinary charisma soon earned him worldwide fame, but they also brought him endless problems. Serious slander motivated the Holy Office to impose serious restrictions on Padre Pio's pastoral ministry. From 1931 to 33 she was not allowed to leave the convent, receive visitors, or maintain correspondence. He could only celebrate holy mass in private. As John Paul II stated in his beatification homily, “by a special permission from God,” Padre Pio had to suffer espionage and painful misunderstandings, slander and limitations in the exercise of his priestly ministry. But in the many years that he was able to exercise his ministry without hindrance, Padre Pio carried out an intense and surprising priestly work, centered on the altar and in the confessional, where he remained for up to fifteen hours at a time, work that propelled many thousands of men and women around the world towards holiness, and helped others to regain their faith or find God. He also enriched the Church with beneficial works such as the modern hospital called the “Relief of Suffering House” and the “Prayer Groups.” He was canonized in 2002 by John Paul II, who had confessed to him several times.