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Over 300 thousand people at the canonisation.
I am a mystery even to myself. Padre Pio.
The Vatican, 2002.
Isn't rejoicing in the Cross precisely
what was so distinctive of Padre Pio?
How current is the spirituality of the cross
that this humble Capuchin of our times lived!
The canonization with the largest participation ever seen.
This is the story of all the false mystics...
that have fallen into eroticism.
The biggest scam in the history of the Church.
The Mistery of Padre Pio.
The roots.
It's here, in Pietrelcina, where Padre Pio was born.
It's here, in Pietrelcina, where Padre Pio grew up
and spent his teenage years.
His father, Horacio Forgione,
would go out to the fields with a donkey,
a sheep and a little pig.
His mother, Peppa, would cook a dish of polenta.
He would wolf it down.
They wouldn't even have any bread.
The young Francisco divided his time between home,
the church and the fields.
Behind this door, this giant of saintliness was born.
Stigmata.
From the Latin 'stigma', supernaturally imprinted mark
on the bodies of some saints in a state of ecstasy,
as a symbol of spiritual participation
to the Passion of Christ.
It all started when Padre Pio received the stigmata,
on 20th September, 1918.
According to Gemelli, Padre Pio's stigmata were caused by hysteria.
When Padre Gemelli visited Padre Pio, he said
that it was a phenomenon of hysteria.
The wounds he had could not be explained by science.
Freud, for example, spoke of several similar cases.
It seems that this wasn't the case at all with Padre Pio's stigmata.
He was basically compared to a charlatan.
In front of Padre Pio, he dared to say that he was a psychopath
who self-harmed.
To say that Father Gemelli
declared war on Padre Pio is improper.
He was a socialist, an atheist,
who later converted to the Christian faith.
He became a doctor and was well-regarded within the Vatican.
When he went to Rome, he wrote his report
saying that Padre Pio had provoked the stigmata himself.
"Padre Pio's stigmata are false", he said.
He was considered an authority in the Catholic world.
With the case of Padre Pio, Gemelli became a positivist doctor again,
who believed that the stigmata
could not be a real phenomenon.
Gemelli was a very good friend of Pope Pius XI.
This relationship has also weighed heavily
in the judgement of the visitors
and in the declarations of the Holy Office.
When Padre Pio died,
the measures taken by the Holy Office were still in place.
The Holy Office denies any allusion to
the supernatural in the incidents attributed to Padre Pio.
Soul Reader.
I went to the confessional where Padre Pio was
and I knelt down on the prie-dieu with him sitting opposite me.
He took me by the hand and said: "Joey, confess your sins".
To be honest, I was sad,
because I wasn't leading a satisfactory life.
I was stunned,
when in perfect English he said to me:
"Remember when you were in a bar with a woman named Barbara?
Do you remember the sins you committed?".
And I insist, in perfect English, he started telling me
all the people I had been with,
the places I had been and the sins I had committed.
"Are you repentant?". And I answered:
"Yes, I am, Padre Pio".
Then he granted me absolution.
My eyes were whirling in my head and I started to rub them like this.
My head was throbbing and I was still rubbing my eyes.
When suddenly, my mind cleared totally
and he placed his stigmatised hand on my lips.
I kissed his stigmata
and he gave me a light slap on the face.
"A bit of patience and courage and you'll be fine", he assured me.
I took my First Communion with Padre Pio
and I have taken confession with him many times.
To be honest, he was quite strict.
I missed Mass one day and later, in our dialect, he said to me:
"Boy, you should know that if people understood the importance of mass,
we would need the police outside all the churches.
Find someone else to take confession with!"
And he threw me out of the confessional.
Padre Pio was strict with those penitents whom he could tell
were only curious or who weren't repentant for their sins.
If that was the case he'd throw you out.
If you want to be a spiritual child of Padre Pio,
you have to really think about it. It's not easy.
You could go two or three times, but he would only grant absolution
when he could see that you were completely repentant.
He could tell when people were trying to trick him and,
like the Devil, he would dismiss them, without giving them importance.
He was extraordinarily charitable
and extremely severe with sin,
with everything that offended Christ.
He spent many hours in the confessional.
In the morning he took confession from women, and from men in the afternoon.
He had a charisma. He knew what was in the heart of everyone,
regardless of which language they spoke.
He was capable of seeing into the deepest part of the human soul.
San Giovanni Rotondo was where the conversions took place.
And these conversions weren't caused by a magic wand,
but by the prayer and suffering
that Padre Pio offered the Lord every day.
He was very sweet and tender with those who,
even though they had committed serious sins,
were truly repentant.
He had a predilection for the most tenacious sinners,
who initially rejected conversion,
or who were enemies of the Church, communists or Masons.
He lived simply.
He had a kind nature,
but if he saw someone doing something wrong,
he would tell them off,
although the penitent always came back.
People say that Padre Pio was strict,
severe, even a bad person,
because he would kick you out without absolving you,
but people also say that Padre Pio was sweet.
I saw Padre Pio every day
because I was his altar boy.
He knew the date of my First Communion.
The day before, encouraged by my dad, I went to take confession with him.
But I had observed, with some fear,
how he sometimes threw people out of the confessional.
I thought: "What if Padre Pio won't grant me absolution?".
So sensibly, I went to take confession with another priest.
After the penance, my father came and warned me:
"Padre Pio is waiting to take your first confession".
I went there, hesitant and worried, because I didn't know what to say.
I knelt down and Padre Pio asked me:
"How long since your last confession?"
I didn't know how to answer.
He put his hand on my head and said:
"Then I'll see you tomorrow at five for your First Communion".
This man, who basically only had the confessional as his school,
wrote some exceptional things.
Whomever he had in front of him needed to be set straight.
With Padre Pio, confession was a beautiful moment,
because in the end you experienced a feeling of liberation
and lightness that I've never again felt throughout my whole life.
The Holy Office condemned Padre Pio with very serious words,
urging believers to abstain from visiting
and communicating with him.
While the Holy Office condemned Padre Pio,
the world, and Italy in particular, was going through turbulent times.
Twins, out in the open.
Father Gemelli said he had examined the stigmata in detail,
which is totally false.
Gemelli wrote a report about Padre Pio's stigmata
without having examined them, and he was a doctor.
He basically did it out of obedience
and abuse of authority,
insisting that he wanted to see the stigmata,
but Padre Pio told him no.
He didn't show the stigmata to Father Agostino Gemelli
because he didn't have authorisation from the Vatican.
He didn't just send his report to the Pope,
he also encouraged a fight against Padre Pio because he didn't like him.
Doctor Romanelli said that
if you put a finger on his hand,
one on his palm and one on the other side, they touched.
The stigmata are a great gift
to be able to participate in the suffering of Christ.
They entail having five wounds on the body:
on the heart, hands and feet.
The stigma that caused Padre Pio the most pain
was on his right shoulder, where Jesus carried the cross.
When he died, they discovered that on that part of his body, Padre Pio
had a wound of ten centimetres in diameter.
It was a call from God to help Christ
in the redemption of man through his own suffering.
When Padre Pio received the stigmata, antibiotics didn't exist.
Despite this, the wounds that he carried for 50 years
never ever became infected.
He walked with difficulty,
because he did so on bleeding flesh.
It was inexplicable that he was continuously losing blood
and remained alive.
Padre Pio's whole life is a miracle of science.
It was the fact that he didn't even have scars.
As a doctor, I can't explain such a prolonged existence,
50 years,
of live stigmas.
The girls of Milan.
Two girls from Milan ran away from home,
leaving a note for their family.
Their dream was to meet Padre Pio
and to take confession and receive communion from him.
We were together in front of the communion altar
when Padre Pio arrived.
The girl next to me was very excited.
When Padre Pio was about to give her the communion wafer, he stopped.
He did the same with the other girl. He didn't give it to her either.
The girls broke down in tears
and one of them was brave enough to ask him:
"Padre Pio, why don't you want to give me communion?".
He answered: "Obedience to you parents above all".
Crying, they ran to the phone to call their mother:
"We disobeyed you by coming here. Forgive us, forgive us".
They came back the next morning
and only then would Padre Pio give them communion.
This is the case of Lea Padovani, the famous Italian actress,
friend of great directors such as Orson Welles,
Dino Risi, Vittorio de Sica...
She came out of her confession with Padre Pio greatly moved.
She was a victim of his ability to read people's consciences.
In fact, Padre Pio, without her even opening her mouth,
told her who she was with and how she felt about her adultery.
She went back several more times to take confession with him
and she actually became one of his spiritual daughters.
The others had fun with Padre Pio on the terrace or in the garden,
where they talked about everything:
politics, social and religious problems...
The Convent.
Padre Pio's days were very simple and very intense.
He liked walking around the convent's garden
and joking with his brothers.
Padre Pio was a lot of fun and very cheerful.
He loved being in the company of others.
He enjoyed telling jokes.
He had these friends, who every afternoon...
One would say: "What shall we do with these empty bottles?".
Another would answer: "Let's toss them onto the terrace".
"What if we hit a friar who's walking past on the head?".
"That's fine, one friar less", another would comment.
Padre Pio would get involved in the joke too.
He would get up and look over the railing,
then turn to the others and say:
"Father Raffaelle is coming.
If you throw the bottle now and hit him on the head,
poor bottle!".
He had a cheerful, joyous personality.
He loved the plays they put on at the convent,
with the participation of the Third Order.
Padre Isidoro, a mediocre musician,
wanted Beniamino Gigli to sing a song he'd composed:
the Ave Maria.
The friars didn't agree
and Beniamino Gigli, in order to appease Padre Isidoro,
finally sang the Ave Maria during Sunday mass.
Shortly after, Gigli died.
While they were having lunch, Padre Isidoro arrived.
As soon as he saw him, Padre Pio joked:
"Have you seen
Beniamino Gigli's autopsy result in the papers?
Do you know that in his stomach they found
Padre Isidoro's Ave Maria?".
Gemma's gaze.
The ophthalmologists assured me that my eyes didn't have pupils
and that I'd never be able to see.
I was very happy to travel to San Giovanni Rotondo
to take my First Communion.
When the train arrived in Apulia,
I started to see.
"Look, I can see the sea!"
On hearing me say
I could see a boat in the the distance, my grandma
looked at the see, trying to find the boat,
and it was there!
Once in San Giovanni Rotondo,
Padre Pio made the sign of the cross on my eyes.
When we were back home, the ophthalmologist examined my eyes
and said to my grandma:
"Madam, hasn't anyone ever told you that this girl has no pupils
and without them it's impossible to see?"
The next thing he did was take a pen out of his pocket
and holding up a handkerchief, he asked me:
"Little girl, do you know what this is?"
"Yes, it's a piece of cloth", I answered.
The doctor was amazed.
Then, surrendering to the evidence, he added:
"This girl has no pupils and you can't see without pupils.
This is a miracle!"
The Holy Office again prohibited believers
from maintaining even epistolary contact with Padre Pio,
and accused Don Luis Orione of disobedience
for coming out in defence of the Capuchin friar.
One of the figures who defended Padre Pio in the 20s,
during the first persecution,
was Don Luis Orione, who's also a saint today.
The big trap.
This defence led to numerous problems for Don Orione.
In fact, it was torture for him.
He was a saint defending another saint.
After a visit to the doctor,
he was diagnosed with syphilis.
Despite being an old man, like Padre Pio, he was accused
of committing sins with women.
He was sent away to a religious house in San Remo,
where he died stoically.
Some time later, a barber from Messina,
on his death bed,
asked to take confession in the presence of two witnesses.
A member of the congregation of the Work of Divine Providence
had bribed the barber.
What did he do?
He made a small cut on the back of Don Orione's neck,
then he disinfected it
and finally cleaned it with a liquid containing syphilitic pus.
Mother.
Padre Pio said to him:
"Your shirt may be white but your soul is dirty".
They say that Beniamino Gigli,
kneeling down before him, started to cry like a little boy.
From that moment, he never abandoned Padre Pio.
Padre Pio always asked Beniamino Gigli
to sing him the song "Mamma".
And he would start to cry,
because it reminded him of his mother.
While Beniamino Gigli sang,
Padre Pio would dry his eyes with a handkerchief and then leave.
He was very close to his mother.
She was to Padre Pio,
a bit like the Virgin Mary was to Jesus.
She was one of the holy women.
She wanted to kiss her son's stigmata,
but he always said no to her, saying:
"It is the son who should kiss the hands of his mother
and not the other way around".
He always told her no,
but once his mother grabbed his hands and kissed him.
You'd think a mother would rejoice
in having a saintly son,
but not her.
She was a humble mother,
a mother whose presence was not obvious,
but who was the mother of us all.
In San Giovanni Rotondo, she was Aunt Giuseppa to everyone.
The mother was sick
and she came to the New Year's Eve function.
It was freezing cold
and she came dressed for summer.
She went outside and caught pneumonia.
She died from it.
When someone said to him:
"Padre, you are a religious person
and you must accept it",
Padre Pio roared:
"It is my mother who has died
and I have to express my feelings! That's why I'm crying!"
And of course he cried.
With good reason he insisted:
"My mother! My mother has died!"
In the face of world fame and fascination
with this humble franciscan,
the Holy Office insists that nobody have contact with Padre Pio.
Algerian War.
One day, in Algeria, I received a postcard with only two lines:
"Life is a fight,
but one that leads you to the light".
Rebirth.
One afternoon,
a commando from the Algerian National Liberation Front
attacked our camp and I was taken prisoner.
They stood me in front of a door with another five soldiers
and they shot us all.
Immediately I had an out of body experience.
I could see my bleeding body lying next to my fellow soldiers,
also murdered.
And suddenly I started rising up through a tunnel.
I saw Mary, amazingly beautiful with her robes of light.
And she welcomed me with a heavenly smile,
as she hugged and kissed me.
Behind her stood Jesus, and then, suddenly,
I sunk my nose into the dust,
back on earth with my fellow soldiers,
who really had died.
I saw that the door had been riddled with bullets,
just as my body had been,
because my uniform had holes in it,
both front and back.
I took my jacket off and went to see my captain,
who on seeing me shouted:
"You're a miracle!"
When the war ended, I saw Padre Pio in the hall at San Francisco
and he, as usual, waved at me and said only this:
"Oh, my son! How you made me suffer!
But what you saw was so beautiful!"
The popular uprising.
What happened?
When the inhabitants of San Giovanni Rotondo
heard that Padre Pio was being forced to leave,
a riot broke out.
Two thousand people gathered outside the convent,
including the authorities, the police and the mayor,
to stop them from taking Padre Pio away.
He went down to the square with the convent superior,
they talked and debated,
but the authorities and the people never backed down.
Then, very slowly,
Padre Pio and the superior walked back
to the little door that was the entrance to the convent.
Once there,
they entered the door and closed it.
I wish they hadn't done that,
because the people got hold of a tree trunk
and broke the door down.
In this letter to Francesco Morcaldi,
the mayor of San Giovanni Rotondo,
Padre Pio voices his concerns
over reprisals
against the citizens who opposed his being moved
and says he prays for them.
This is the creature that Providence,
with your help, has created.
Here she is.
Admire her and bless her along with my Lord, our Father.
A seed has been sown in the earth
and with His love it shall grow.
Do not deny us your help.
Join us in our mission to relieve human suffering.
I arrived in San Giovanni Rotondo after Padre Pio called me,
on 23rd September, 1955,
six months before,
to prepare the inauguration of the Home to Relieve Suffering
in 1956.
Relief House 5 May 1956
When the day of the inauguration came,
on 5th of May,1956,
I was four and my father took me and my sister.
There was a real party atmosphere,
especially when Padre Pio came by in his car
and everyone cheered and clapped.
When Padre Pio came up with the idea
for a hospital in San Giovanni Rotondo,
near the convent,
it wasn't considered feasible.
It was only able to be built thanks to the Providence plan.
Imagine a big hospital in the mountains.
It seemed simply crazy
and I think that Barbara Ward thought the same:
"I've ended up surrounded by crazy people".
The journalist.
Journalist Barbara Ward, from The Economist magazine,
came to San Giovanni Rotondo
because she wanted to meet Padre Pio.
She wanted to ask for his intercession
in her boyfriend's conversion,
as she wanted to be married according to the Catholic tradition.
Padre Pio answered simply:
"If it is God's wish, even now".
Her boyfriend, Captain Jackson,
was responsible for the post-war reconstruction funds
provided by the United Nations, who had added to the Marshall Plan
a grants project through the UNRRA.
Her boyfriend immediately said that he wished to be baptised as Catholic
to make his girlfriend happy and marry in the Catholic Church.
The baptism took place
on the same day Barbara Ward met Padre Pio.
And as Padre Pio said: "If it is God's wish, even now".
Barbara Ward, through her boyfriend, managed to convince the organisation
of the need to help build
a large hospital in southern Italy.
"The Engineer"
They called him "the engineer",
although later it was known that he wasn't an engineer.
Even the Court of Foggia
tried him for building a hospital without having a degree.
This helps us understand that behind it all was the Providence.
Gestapo prisoner.
The young Karol Wojtyla
was a student in the academic world of Rome.
He was well aware of Padre Pio's depth and spiritual gifts.
Actually, he went to see him in San Giovanni Rotondo,
prayed with him and maintained correspondence with him.
This knowledge of Karol Wojtyla's
led him to ask for Padre Pio's intercession for a friend of his,
the doctor Wanda Poltaska,
tortured by the nazis and later declared terminally ill by doctors
due to cancer.
Padre Pio said:
"This we cannot refuse".
A second letter from Wojtyla confirmed
Wanda's inexplicable recovery.
Padre Pio, herald of the Lord?
To say so is blasphemy to the Holy Office,
who prohibits the publication of Alberto del Fante's book
in which he is proclaimed as such.
The "Banker of God"
This is the story of the banker Giuffrè,
also called "God's Banker",
a banker who lent a lot of money, with very high interest rates,
to religious organisations
in the 50s and 60s.
Then there was a huge vocational "boom"
and many religious orders and dioceses built seminaries
and expensive buildings linked to him.
Many went to this money lender
in order to pay the costs of these large building projects.
Padre Pio didn't want anything to do with it
and he advised his provincial superiors against it as well.
In this letter from Padre Teófilo da Pozzo,
a Tuscan provincial superior, to Giuffrè,
dated 25th November, 1958,
we can see the relationship between the Capuchins and "God's banker".
In the same letter is the news
that doctor Baccalà has died of a heart attack
after losing all his savings, totalling 3.7 million lira.
It was a great story: the bankruptcy of the Vatican.
The Giufrè case,
when they came here to get money from Padre Pio.
Giuffrè owes in total
more than 3695 million lira
in interest to his clients.
Bankruptcy was declared
and our superiors wanted Padre Pio
to help the province by diverting money
from the Home to Relieve Suffering
to pay off the debts incurred with this banker.
Padre Pio obviously said no
and this brought him a lot of problems.
Giuffrè's debt is calculated at more than 21 billion lira.
As far as I know, Padre Pio wanted, from the start, to entrust
the running of the Home to Relieve Suffering
to the Secular Franciscan Order.
Evidently, the second time around,
he decided to put the Order of the Capuchins in charge,
but its general minister refused,
saying the running of a hospital was not part
of their duties.
Finally, Padre Pio decided to entrust
the Home to Relieve Suffering to the Holy See.
From this person I have received
the amount of 300.000 lira
to be administered by Giuffrè.
The perception.
Initially, John XXIII thought highly of Padre Pio.
He knew, probably because he had been informed,
about the conversions that took place here
and that pleased him tremendously.
It seems one of his sisters
was also with Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo.
Why did he change his opinion?
Probably because he was surrounded
by people who didn't respect Padre Pio.
He defended his friends,
like the Bishop of Manfredonia,
the Cardinal of Florence, the Cardinal of Padua...
And they were all against Padre Pio.
Just like, if I'm not mistaken, the case of monsignor Maccari.
Evidently, they all influenced his thoughts negatively.
John XXIII never doubted the accusations
that monsignor Maccari presented.
In this letter from judge Giovanni Alberto Alessandri
to Pope John XXIII, dated 20th September, 1960,
the magistrate warns the Holy Father
of the apostolic visit of monsignor Carlo Maccari,
saying the rules regarding this type of mission were being violated,
and he warns that his presence will only serve to defame Padre Pio
for a long time.
It wasn't the figure of Padre Pio that worried Maccari,
but rather the atmosphere that had been created.
But that image of the village, of the country life,
wasn't liked by the the intellectual elite of the papal Curia.
I have met people
who were linked to Padre Pio in an improper way,
especially those known as the "pious women".
The historian Sergio Luzzato
had access to Pope Roncalli's Archives.
In fact, in a note from 30th January, 1960,
the Pope wrote that he was very worried
about the circle of women around Padre Pio,
namely Olga Lecci, Tina Belloni and Cleonice Morcaldi.
They accused him of having sexual relationships
with some of his spiritual daughters.
I feel sorry for Padre Pio:
his soul must be saved and I pray for him intensely
Archives of John XXIII
The Friendly Pope.
Paul VI spoke to him many times
or informed him of what was going on inside the Church.
The Pope wrote to Padre Pio and trusted him.
He knew how much Padre Pio was suffering
and the situation of the Church
in those most painful moments of his papacy.
Letter from the future Paul VI to Padre Pio,
dated 20th June, 1960,
congratulating him on his 50 years of priesthood
and asking him to pray for him.
Temple of prayer and science.
Padre Pio predicted my work and dedication
to this hospital.
So I said to him:
"Padre, I want to be a nun,
but my mother and father say I can't".
And he replied: "You a nun? What are you talking about?
Go and study.
One day you will be the mother of many children".
The hospital Home to Relieve Suffering is, without doubt,
the manifestation of Padre Pio's holiness.
Because the Home, as he put it,
is a place of prayer and science.
He specified: "Temple of prayer and science".
The motive for setting up the prayer groups
was as an answer to Pious XII's appeal.
During the years of the Second World War,
the Pope appealed universally for the Church to pray.
Padre Pio heard this command and said:
"We must be the first to answer the Pope's call".
I was a bit angry then,
but after, when I grew up,
I understood what it meant to be in the service of Padre Pio.
Because now I'm here, doing his work.
I see the figure of a doctor
as the person wearing the stethoscope,
because that serves to cure the patient.
But, above all, I think that Padre Pio
would never have wanted us to lose sight of prayer
through the Rosary.
Because if the sick person was Jesus,
and the poor, sick person was Jesus times two,
the sick children, for Padre Pio, must have been the Holy Trinity.
I went to take confession with Padre Pio and he said:
"My child, you have to work in my Home".
I took a nursing course.
The night before the exams, at four in the morning,
he came to me in my dreams to help me.
"Don't worry, revise abdominal typhus", he told me.
The next morning, I walked into the exam room
and the provincial director said:
"Miss, tell me about abdominal typhus".
I aced the exam!
The Last Mass 22 September 1968
In the last months before Padre Pio's death,
some of the brothers noticed
that for months there had been no sign
of the stigmata on his feet.
He was aware that the stigmata were disappearing
for months before his death.
While on his hands,
the last crust of blood fell off shortly before his death,
in the cell where Padre Pio died.
He had the stigmata when he almost fell,
because it was documented by the photographer Elia Stelluto.
There are still photos which show
that Padre Pio still had them.
After his death, the stigmata disappeared.
The last morning?
Padre Pio, when he stood up after Mass,
almost fell as we walked down the stairs.
I was already on the first step, because I was ahead of him.
Friar Pio Martino was behind
and saw Padre Pio stumble.
He grabbed him by the waist to stabilise him.
I turned around and placed my shoulder next to his.
And then I shouted: "The wheelchair! The wheelchair!
I'll be right back with the wheelchair!"
I was in the sacristy.
They sat Padre Pio in the chair and we took him to the sacristy.
While we were taking him there, he repeated:
"My children, my children".
It was practically a whisper: "Oh my God, oh my God".
was also where Padre Pio
This small, internal chapel
celebrated the Eucharist in total privacy
during the years of segregation.
The mysterious hand.
Ali Agca declared before the judge Ilario Martella
that there was a second nun who grabbed him by the arm
to prevent him from continuing to shoot at John Paul II.
Only the hitman managed to see this nun
and her name is sister Rita of the Holy Spirit,
spiritual daughter of Padre Pio.
In this letter, monsignor Gagliardi, archbishop of Manfredonia, declares:
"We should neither feel guilty
nor try to avoid the gossip surrounding Padre Pio".
The problem started when I had some blood tests done.
I was given two months to live.
I did a whole cycle of chemotherapy.
Pray, have faith and wait.
When I was in hospital,
I always had Padre Pio's heirlooms with me, given to me by the friars
during my intensive therapy.
I prayed and prayed to him. I always prayed to Padre Pio
and he gave me strength. He never abandoned me
and I felt protected by him.
Padre Pio would always say,
that he would make more noise alive than dead.
And it's true. I was close to death yet here I still am on Earth.
The funeral 26 September 1968
"Padre Pio is sick! Padre Pio is sick! Run, run!"
And I was on my way to Padre Pio's cell,
when I heard doctor Sala say:
"We're going to lose Padre Pio tonight!
We're going to lose Padre Pio tonight!"
I asked: "Father superior, shell I fetch the holy oil?"
"Run, run, my son!", he told me hurriedly.
I gave him absolution sub conditione,
used when the sick person can no longer speak.
I began to anoint his eyes, nose and mouth.
I tried to hurry so as to finish quickly,
as I heard doctor Sala say:
"We're going to lose Padre Pio tonight!"
Padre Pio didn't say a single word.
Perhaps he quietly mumbled: "Jesus, Mary. Jesus, Mary".
At two thirty he died.
When he died,
many of us thought the era of Padre Pio had ended.
That he would not be spoken of again.
People slowly started leaving San Giovanni Rotondo.
The shelters and the hospital remained,
and were reorganised,
until finally the Home to Relieve Suffering
was put up for sale,
as they were unable to keep it afloat.
Padre Pio's story was coming to an end.
I feel defeated, but I give thanks to God.
Today I should feel completely destroyed,
but thanks to God I have overcome it.
I pray that God sanctifies them.
Open grave 2 March 2008
there was a huge amount of expectation.
When his body was exhumed,
There was a huge amount of expectation.
We wondered what state Padre Pio's body would be in.
I was there when they opened the coffin
and I also took part in the work to preserve
Padre Pio's mortal remains.
You could recognise him by his abundant beard.
Obviously, the physiognomical features of his face
had been altered and he appeared gaunt.
His skin was stretched tight over his cranium.
But the Padre Capuchin's general features were recognisable.
Padre Pio's body,
as it has been preserved in the glass coffin,
wears a mask that covers his face
as well as his copious beard,
which was still present on the saint's body.
He went through a process of transformation
known in medical terms as "corification",
which is when the tissues have dried out
and have taken on a brownish, blackish colour.
The miracle of canonization.
I didn't feel well.
I told my mother that I didn't want to go to school,
but she made me, because at that time I didn't like school.
But, that night, when my mother came to say goodnight,
I didn't recognise her, and so I was immediately taken to hospital.
Matteo's heart stopped for almost an hour.
Nine of his organs were affected.
He was in a very serious condition
and for the doctors, there was no chance of recuperation.
During the coma, in my dreams I saw Padre Pio on my right
and three angels on my left.
One had golden wings and was wearing a white tunic.
The other two had white wings and red tunics.
Padre Pio told me not to worry, because I would soon be cured.
During Matteo's suffering and his coma,
which lasted eleven, long days,
I prayed for Padre Pio to intervene, so that what happened to Lazarus
would also happen to my son: a resurrection.
I was with friar Modestino, who insisted:
"I offer my life for Matteo,
do not be scared, pray, have faith,
because Padre Pio needs a miracle
to become a saint and this could be it".
Matteo's recovery was
something exceptional for us, the doctors.
The boy
had gone from having a high fever
to having septic shock, with multiple organ failure
and a prolonged cardiac arrest.
Among us, the doctors, word had already spread
that Matteo had died.
Padre Pio is like a grandfather to me.
Someone to talk to
about specific problems.
Matteo's illness and then miracle were
two extremely intense experiences,
that have inevitably changed our lives forever.
I've always believed that I was given a second chance
for which I should be eternally grateful.
When I speak to a non-believer, I say:
"I'm here.
It's something inexplicable for science,
but there's another explanation that we are unable to comprehend".
The privileged relationship with the highest offices
will serve to destroy Padre Pio.
The conspiracy.
They set up microphones,
not only in Padre's Pio's confessional,
but also in his cell.
It was the microphone in his cell.
Friar Giustino da Lecce
in a letter sent on November 1961, confesses
his participation in the conspiracy against Padre Pio.
"Friar Bonaventura da Pavullo", writes,
"I was aware Padre Pio was being listened to
and I convinced myself to keep doing so".
The microphone had to be attached
with string and then the recorder set up,
and this could only be done in Padre Pio's cell.
"I installed the microphones with the permission of my superiors,
although I realise it was the wrong thing to do".
The cells were all next to one another:
one, two, three, four and five. So, the last two cells.
"I am aware that the blame can fall solely on my shoulders
and not on the Order".
Padre Giustino says he did it out of obedience.
He had to find out Padre Pio's secrets,
those related to both women and men.
That's why microphones were set up in the confessional and the cell.
"On other occasions,
when Padre Pio had slept at the clinic,
it was said that other women
had been given permission to spend the night with him".
Microphones were set up in the guest quarters,
where the women were received,
and in cell number 5, where his collaborators
in the building and management of his Home could be found.
Monsignor Gagliardi, archbishop of Manfredonia,
was defamatory about Padre Pio.
Monsignor Gagliardi accused Padre Pio of having a lover,
but it wasn't true. He was the one who had a lover.
Once he found a microphone under his bed
and he got rid of it.
Padre Pio cut the microphone wire with this knife,
as was published by the newspaper Il Tempo
on 28th December, 1963.
Padre Pio was persecuted.
He was always shut away, just like a prisoner in jail.
Padre Pio never defended himself.
He never reproached or accused anyone.
He always left his fate in the hands of God.
Friars who didn't want him around
invented whatever story they could to obtain their goal,
which was to make his life unbearable.
Padre Pio was forced to sign a letter
in which he declared that he had never been persecuted
by the Holy See.
"I enjoy freedom in my work
and I have neither enemies, nor persecutors",
wrote Padre Pio on 16th December, 1964.
His whole life he was persecuted in this house.
Practically all the people
who made Padre Pio's life impossible have repented.
Repent.
He was sorry and prayed for them.
He asked the Lord to give him the strength to convert them.
Maccari's declarations rehabilitated Padre Pio before his death.
One of these people is father Agostino Gemelli.
In fact, as those close to Padre Pio and his personal doctor,
Giuseppe Sala, have confirmed,
Agostino Gemelli apologised to Padre Pio
before taking confession with him.
Monsignor Gagliardi had time to reconsider
when he concluded his time as bishop.
Padre Pio wrote to him
and he answered when he was back in Matera, his home town.
Padre Pio used to say:
"I was born in the Church
and I wish to die in the Church".
I have mistreated and damaged you.
I will do more dead than alive. Padre Pio.