The gray-bearded friar, to whom the fictional character Obi-Wan Kenobi would bear a striking resemblance, who was described by National Review as having “the greatest moral prestige of any priest in Italy,” was widely credited with transforming the life of a region of Italy that had been cruelly impoverished for centuries by bringing — chiefly through the establishment of his famous hospital, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza — prosperity, employment, education, and first-class health care.
There are innumerable testimonies to the dramatic effect the Padre had in people’s lives. “I was drawn to him like a magnet!” an elderly lady from the Italian city of Taranto told the author in San Giovanni Rotondo in 1978. From the time of her first visit in 1948, she and her family traveled several times a year to see him and ask his counsel. Long after his death, she and her husband, children, and grandchildren continued to make the four-hour trip from their home at least twice a year to “visit” with Padre Pio at his tomb.
Andre Mandato (1928–2014), a native of Padre Pio’s hometown of Pietrelcina who became a custom tailor in North Plainfield, New Jersey, related how “Padre Pio changed my life.” He went with a friend to see the Padre in 1945 — out of curiosity. He left the confessional awestruck. Padre Pio knew — without ever having met Mandato before — that he had been debating in his mind whether or not to make his confession to him before returning home. Moreover, Padre Pio recited, correctly and in detail, all the sins of which the young man was guilty. “He knew everything that I had done,” Mandato declared. “Padre Pio asked, ‘Have you done this? … Have you done that?’” In every instance, the answer was yes. Padre Pio referred not merely to general categories of sin, but to specific acts which he could scarcely have guessed, even through a shrewd knowledge of human nature. After Mandato left the confessional, he said, “All I could do was cry, cry, cry.” His experience had a profound and lasting effect on him. “Many times, we ask God to forgive us,” Mandato said, “but with the mind and not the heart. Padre Pio made it possible for me to ask forgiveness of God with all my heart and soul, not just with my mind and lips. From that moment I have really felt what I prayed. He made my religion real!”6
Monika Hellwig (1929–2005), professor of theology at Georgetown University, spent three years in Italy during the time of the Second Vatican Council and visited San Giovanni Rotondo. She said she never met anyone in Italy who was skeptical of Padre Pio. Even radicals and anti-clericals regarded the venerable friar with “respect and reverence.” Moreover, she could testify that the stigmatized Capuchin led people to “deep conversions.” “What struck me most,” Hellwig stated, “is how much Padre Pio mediated the presence of the Divine to all who came to him. People came away from him invariably inspired and assured of God’s presence and care for them. In him they experienced a most immediate revelation of God’s love and concern for them.”7
Padre Pio was almost an exact contemporary of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), the German Lutheran theologian who, in an attempt to reconcile the traditional teachings of Christianity with contemporary perceptions, devised a theology that “demythologized” the Gospels, stripping away such uncomfortable baggage as miracles and other vestiges of a “first-century worldview” in order to get at what he believed was the essential kernel of truth underlying all the “mythological” paraphernalia. Bultmann’s approach and those of religious writers with a similar point of view strongly colored much of the theological thinking of the twentieth century. Bultmann wrote in Kerygma and Myth: “It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless [radio] and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.”8 Meanwhile, Padre Pio convinced many reasonable and intelligent people that he regularly saw and conversed with the Virgin Mary, that he could see their guardian angels just like he saw them, that he cast out demons, and, on occasion, was bodily attacked by them.
Without publishing a book or delivering a lecture, Padre Pio convinced thousands that miracles are not mythology but reality. Through his life and ministry, thousands came to accept the Sacred Scriptures and all the historical doctrines of Christianity. Indeed, Padre Pio, whom some ecclesiastical authorities dismissed as an undereducated “peasant,” is attested to have communicated the existential presence of Christ more directly, more immediately, and more satisfactorily than any of his immensely erudite contemporaries in their university chairs.
Here was a man who lived in the time of radio, television, movies, automobiles, air travel, and space exploration; who, though he did not live to see (and probably lament) personal computers and the internet, died at the beginning of the computer age; who worked miracles similar to those performed by the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament. Here was a man in whom the words of Christ seem to have been fulfilled in a very obvious way: “Who believes in me will also do the works that I do” (Jn 14:12). Many sane, well-educated, and reasonably objective people have affirmed of Padre Pio that, like Moses, “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex 33:11).
There is overwhelming testimony also that Padre Pio was gifted with the “aroma of paradise,” that frequently he displayed intimate knowledge of the inner lives and thoughts of those who came to him. Without leaving his friary at San Giovanni Rotondo, many insist, Padre Pio was often seen and addressed in other parts of Italy and the world; while his colleagues observed him deep in prayer or even dozing, people hundreds, even thousands, of miles away saw and heard him.
The archives of the Our Lady of Grace friary contain, according to a friar familiar with them, more than a thousand testimonies of people inexplicably delivered from incurable maladies and the effects of crippling injuries. Even more remarkable, great numbers of people swear that when the stigmatized friar celebrated Mass, he communicated to them the reality of Christ on Calvary, and that, during his Mass, Padre Pio’s face and form underwent a visible change — almost a metamorphosis. One of the friars who assisted Padre Pio in the saint’s later years declared that more people were deeply touched by Padre Pio through his Mass than through his healings, bilocations, and prophecies.
Perhaps most important, thousands testify that through Padre Pio’s ministry, they learned to walk in holiness and to resign themselves to God’s will, offering their suffering and heartache as a sacrifice to the Almighty for the conversion of souls.
Padre Pio’s disciples cherish his words, “I shall be able to do much more for you when I am in heaven than I can now while I am on earth.” Many report great favors received through his intercession. Some, even decades after his death, smell the “aroma of paradise,” which is believed to be a sign of his presence. Some, like Padre Pio’s old friend Andrea Cardone, a doctor of medicine, profess to have seen and talked to Padre Pio “in his mortal flesh,” even while his wax-masked corpse reposes in his tomb.
Not everyone was impressed by Padre Pio. The local archbishop, Pasquale Gagliardi (1859–1941), insisted that the stigmata were merely “pimples” and that Pio soaked himself in perfume to produce the “aroma of paradise.” Eventually, he swore on his pectoral cross that the Capuchin was demon-possessed. Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959), a prominent psychologist, Franciscan priest, and theologian, characterized Pio as an ignorant southern Italian peasant of limited intelligence, manipulated by his unscrupulous directors, whose wounds were the result of hysteria. Dr. Amico Bignami (1862–1929), professor of pathology at the University of Rome, confirmed the existence of the stigmata, but implied that the wounds were the result of autosuggestion. Monsignor Carlo Maccari (1913–1997), who conducted an investigation