Padre Pio wrote Padre Agostino, “The horrors of the war … keep me in a constant mortal agony. I would rather die than witness such slaughter!”36 A few weeks later he complained, “The horrors of war are driving me nearly mad. My soul is plunged into extreme desolation. I had prepared myself for this, but it still has not prevented the terror and anguish that are gripping my soul!”37
Padre Agostino wrote back: “My God, what a slaughter! What a bloodbath! What is going to happen to the world?”38
Even so, Padre Pio had hopes that the war would prove to be a “health-giving purge” for the world, for Italy, and for the Church. He hoped that it would turn people back to God. It was his fervent prayer that, after passing through a night “shrouded in thickest darkness,” mankind would emerge into a “new day.” Just as Woodrow Wilson, who would take America into the “Great War” two years later, hoped that the result of the conflict would be a “world safe for democracy,” Padre Pio prayed for a world of reawakened faith, peace, love, and justice:
Ah, may all the nations afflicted by this war understand the mystery of the pacific wrath of the Lord! … If he turns their poisonous joys into bitterness, if he corrupts their pleasures, and if he scatters thorns along the paths of their riot, paths hitherto strewn with the roses of slaughter, the reason is that he loves them still. And this is the holy cruelty of the physician, who, in extreme cases of sickness, makes us take most bitter and most horrible medicines…. The greatest mercy of God is not to let those nations remain in peace with each other who are not in peace with God.”39
Private Forgione
The clergy in Italy were not exempt from conscription, and by the end of May 1915 thirteen priests and eight seminarians from the Capuchin province of Sant’Angelo had been drafted. “My God, what a terrible situation!” Padre Agostino lamented, terrified at the prospect of conscription. He assured Padre Pio that, with his poor health, he would surely be rejected for military service. However, Padre Pio was not so sure, as it was common knowledge that the medical officer for the Benevento district (under whose jurisdiction he was) was notoriously unwilling to grant exemptions for physical disability.
In November, Padre Pio was drafted. However, the “ferocious medical captain” who examined him at Benevento diagnosed tuberculosis and sent him to Caserta for further examinations. There, to the dismay of the sickly priest, “the stupid colonel” pronounced him physically fit and roared, “Go to your regiment and meet your new superiors!”
Private Francesco Forgione was assigned to the Tenth Company of the Army Medical Corps in Naples, where some nine hundred priests and religious served in uniform.40 Padre Pio was given janitorial duties. Almost immediately, he began to vomit everything he ate. His company commander ordered further examinations. He was removed from the barracks and lodged in a hotel in Naples — and required to pay for his bill out of pocket. Not having any money, he had to wire his father, who came at once with money and provisions. Finally, just before Christmas, he was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and given a year’s leave.
“Dead or Alive, You’re Staying Here at Foggia!”
Since Padre Pio had weathered several weeks in the army without dying, Padre Benedetto was determined to make him return to community life, especially now that so many friars were in the service that most of the convents were nearly empty. (Because the Capuchin order had only recently been reestablished, most of the friars were younger men.) On December 20, Padre Agostino wrote Padre Pio to inform him that Padre Benedetto wanted him back at the friary, telling him, “It’s being repeated all over the province that you are being deceived by the devil, who is taking advantage of your affection for your native soil.”41 On Christmas Eve, Padre Benedetto wrote, “Foggia awaits you.” Still Padre Pio balked. He accused Padre Agostino of being like one of Job’s comforters in insisting that it would be good for him to return to the cloister. He argued that since Padre Benedetto did not order him under obedience to return to community life, he did not have to go. Padre Agostino wrote back:
It is an unshakable principle in the economy of our salvation that obedience must prevail over all worldly reasoning. Well, authority has spoken clearly concerning your return to the cloister. Therefore, no other advice and no other person can make an exception. The authority can be mistaken, but obedience is never mistaken. God himself has never dispensed any saint from obedience to authority.42
Ultimately, it was Raffaelina Cerase who was the direct cause of Padre Pio’s return to community life. The previous summer her sister Giovina had been hospitalized in a nearly skeletal state with a life-threatening liver disease. Raffaelina thereupon offered herself as a victim to God for her sister’s recovery. The next month she wrote to Padre Pio about “a fresh gift Jesus has given me” — a painful tumor rapidly developing in a breast.43 Nevertheless she refused to see a physician for fear of exposing her naked body to the gaze of a male doctor.44
“Do you mean to say that you don’t know that anyone who refuses human remedies exposes himself to the danger of offending the Lord?” Padre Pio wrote back. “And don’t you know that God tells us through the Sacred Scriptures to love the physician for love of himself?” He ordered her to seek immediate medical help, to pray for a cure, but to “be resigned all the time to do whatever God wants.”45
The physician she consulted promised Raffaelina that a mastectomy would result in her being “perfectly cured,” but she wrote to Padre Pio that she had “no illusions.”46 He wrote back that the cancer was “precisely God’s will,” proof that he “wants to bring you by this path to greater conformity to the divine prototype, Jesus Christ” — that is, to unite her with his suffering. He urged her to look to the future, when “Jesus will reward your faithfulness and resignation [in heaven].”47
Three months after Raffaelina’s mastectomy, it was apparent that it had been unsuccessful and that her sickness was spreading throughout her body. However, Giovina was now perfectly well. The doctors could find no trace of her illness. Raffaelina confided to Padre Pio: “I asked Jesus for an exchange. Has he granted it to me?”48 (Giovina wouldn’t die for another fifteen years, when she was seventy.) To Padre Agostino, who visited her at her home in Foggia, Raffaelina confided that she had also offered herself as a victim for Padre Pio’s return to the cloister.
Meanwhile, Padre Agostino was concerned by the attitude of the people in Pietrelcina — and in particular Padre Pio’s mother, who did not want him to leave. “You must understand that Padre Pio belongs to us,” he insisted to Giuseppa. “You’ve got to give him up.” She seemed mollified, but Pannullo was concerned about mob violence. In fact, someone had told Agostino, “If you run off with our little saint, we’ll cut your head off!” When he told Raffaelina about this, she told him: “Father, don’t be afraid. Make arrangements with Padre Benedetto. Padre Pio will come here [to Foggia]. He will hear my confession and he will assist me at my death. Make the superiors give Padre Pio the faculties to hear confessions. He will save many souls.”49
Padre Agostino then pleaded with Padre Pio to come to Foggia, if only for a few days. “Don’t you want to console this poor soul? Do you want to let her leave the world with this disappointment? … Don’t you feel any obligation to this soul who has prayed so much, and, indeed, is still praying for you?”50
On February 17, 1916, telling his parents and relatives and neighbors that he was going to Foggia for a few days to assist a dying woman, Padre Pio went to the railroad station at Benevento to meet Padre Agostino. The two set out to the