“Those Foul Creatures”
In November 1912, when Padre Agostino’s letters began arriving smeared with ink, Padre Pio suspected the handiwork of devils. At the suggestion of Pannullo, Padre Pio began placing a crucifix on the smudged letters. At once, “they became a little lighter, at least so that we could read them, even if with difficulty,” the archpriest noted.15
There are numerous stories concerning Padre Pio’s encounters at Piana Romana and in “The Tower” with demons in physical form. Several former neighbors swore that a demon (or demons) used to interfere with Padre Pio’s prayer and meditation at the Piana Romana by appearing in the form of a snake with an enormous head.
One night, neighbors heard terrible noises — crashes, bangs, and shouts — coming from Padre Pio’s apartment, and they complained to his parents. (Orazio seems to have returned home for good around 1912.) At first, they thought people were fighting. When they reached their son’s apartment to investigate, Orazio and Giuseppa found things strewn about the room and Padre Pio lying in a state of collapse. Seeing the disorder, they asked him with whom he had been fighting. “With those foul fiends,” Padre Pio replied.16
Many of the accounts of supernatural activity in Pietrelcina are from the testimony of people many years after the events. However, a letter that Padre Pio wrote to Padre Agostino on January 18, 1913, seems to corroborate the accounts of demonic activity in Padre Pio’s abode. He wrote that he heard a “diabolic noise” but “saw nothing at first.” Then a number of demons appeared “in the most abominable form” and “hurled themselves upon me and threw me on the floor, struck me violently, and threw pillows, books, and chairs through the air and cursed me with exceedingly filthy words. It is fortunate that the apartments beside me and below me are vacant.”17
It is obvious that Padre Pio was not using a metaphor for an inward temptation or a state of mind. He saw, heard, and apparently felt specific phenomena which, despite the vacancy of the adjoining apartments, were heard by neighbors several doors away.
A few days later, on February 13, 1913, he wrote to Padre Agostino, “My body is all bruised because of the many blows that our enemies have rained on me.” More than once, in the same month, he added, the demons snatched away his nightshirt and beat him while he shivered, stark naked, in the cold: “Even after they left me, I remained nude for a long time, for I was powerless to move because of the cold. Those evil creatures would have thrown themselves all over me if sweet Jesus hadn’t helped me.”18
Even after Padre Pio left Pietrelcina, “The Tower” was allegedly the site of apparent demonic activity. People claimed that in his room horrible noises could be heard from time to time, earthen pots spontaneously shattered, and chairs were thrown about by unseen forces. Michele (who did not return to Pietrelcina, at least for good, until 1919) reported these disturbing phenomena to his brother, now living in San Giovanni Rotondo, who told him that the apartment was still haunted by “those foul creatures” and directed him to summon a priest to perform an exorcism on the place. When this was done, there was no more trouble.
It is indisputable that there were phenomena associated with Padre Pio that cannot be readily explained. Many stories can be ascribed to hearsay, but for some there is good documentation. It would be a mistake to dismiss them all out of hand as legends and the figments of superstitious imaginations.
There is much about Padre Pio, especially concerning the supernatural aspect of his life, that will probably never be completely understood — especially if one wishes to exclude the possibility of it.
Chapter Eight
“Supernatural Graces”
“Totally Lost in God”
Padre Pio’s interior life — his prayer, meditation, and communication with God and the invisible world — was the most important aspect of his existence.
For most people, as far as conscious experience is concerned, prayer is a oneway conversation. They trust that God hears their petitions, accepts their praise and thanksgiving, and pardons their sins, but their senses do not perceive his response. For Padre Pio, prayer was often an emphatically different kind of experience. He was certain that God spoke to him literally and directly, sometimes through a word perceived through his organs of hearing, sometimes through vision perceived through his organs of sight, but more often through “the vision that is not seen” and “the voice that is not heard,” through which the spiritual realm was just as real and accessible as the beings of flesh and blood around him.
During his exile in Pietrelcina, Padre Pio wrote to Padre Benedetto:
My ordinary way of praying is this: as soon as I begin to pray I feel my soul begin to recollect itself in a peace and tranquillity (sic) that I cannot express in words…. The senses remain suspended, with the exception of my hearing, which sometimes is not suspended; yet usually this sense does not cause me trouble, and … even if a great deal of noise were made around me, this would not bother me in the slightest.1
Padre Pio wrote of a “continuous thought of God.” Sometimes he felt “touched by the Lord … in a way that is so vivid and so sweet that most of the time I am impelled to shed tears of sorrow for my infidelity and for the tender mercy of having a Father so loving and so good as to summon me to his presence in this way.” “Enriched by supernatural graces,” he felt a “spiritual devotion” so intense that his soul was “totally lost in God.” Other times he experienced “an impulse so powerful” that he found himself “languishing for God, almost ready to die.” He emphasized that “all this arises, not from my own mental efforts or preparation, but from an internal flame and from a love” poured into his soul from God, “so powerful that if God did not quickly come to my aid, I would be consumed!”2
In another letter to Padre Benedetto, he described “the internal flame”:
Hardly do I apply myself to pray than all at once I feel as if my heart is possessed by a flame of living love … unlike any flame of this poor world. It … consumes, but gives no pain. It is so sweet and delicious that the spirit finds great pleasure in it, and remains satiated in it in such a way that it does not lose its desire. Oh, God! This is a thing of supreme wonder to me. Perhaps I will never come to understand it until I reach the heavenly country.3
Within this mystical state, Padre Pio frequently received heavenly visitors. Writing to Padre Agostino in 1912, he declared, “Heavenly beings do not cease to visit me and make me anticipate the delight of the blessed.”4 On another occasion, Padre Pio wrote to him: “At night, as my eyes close, I see a veil come down and paradise opens to me, and, rejoicing in this vision, I sleep with a happy smile and with complete calm, expecting the little companion of my infancy [his guardian angel] to come to wake me and sing praises each morning with me to the delight of our hearts.”5 He could be referring simply to dreams in this case, but on many other occasions he made it clear that his experience of the supernatural world and its inhabitants was as real to him as the material world.
This, however, was not always true for him. Sometimes, Padre Pio found himself in a “great aridity of spirit,” in which it was impossible for him to become recollected and pray, no matter how strongly he desired to do so. Sometimes he wondered whether his visions were mere hallucinations, whether his experiences truly corresponded to reality. In 1913, he confided to Padre Benedetto: “An atrocious thought crosses my mind: namely, that all this could be an illusion without my recognizing it.”6
Most of the time, however, Padre Pio was absolutely convinced of the reality of his supersensible experiences, but he realized that it was very difficult for him to communicate effectively to others what he was experiencing.