To many, Padre Pio remains a curious and unbelievable figure, subject matter for supermarket tabloids, his alleged appearances after death compared to those of Elvis Presley. Many, at least in the “developed” world, cannot relate to mysterious fragrances, miraculous healings, and communication with Mary, angels, and devils.
Some might be inclined to write off Padre Pio as a curious footnote to religious history, dismissing him as the creation of the credulous piety of a backward society. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that, for thousands of people from all walks of life — physicians, scientists, lawyers, journalists, as well as peasants and unskilled laborers — Padre Pio made Christianity real. Through his ministry, many were led to deep and permanent conversion experiences and lives changed for the better.
It also cannot be denied that many individuals — perhaps thousands — have testified to Padre Pio’s mystical charismata. Some accounts are vague and farfetched, the half-remembered ramblings of aged persons recalling events many years distant. However, there are other accounts contemporary to the events in question, written down in detail by educated, intelligent, reliable, and well-balanced witnesses.
One thing is certain: Padre Pio cannot be dismissed lightly. It seems plain that several hypotheses can be made about the Capuchin priest and his ministry, though only one of them can ultimately be true:
• First, that Padre Pio was one of the greatest frauds in history, a showman, perhaps in league with Satan (if one believes in the devil), a magician capable of humbugging the public to a degree unimagined even by P. T. Barnum.
• Second, that Padre Pio was the product, in large measure, of the superstitious imaginings of an ignorant and gullible peasantry who read into the life of a simple, holy priest what they wanted to see, building a cult based on their own fantasies.
• Third, that Padre Pio was delusional, perhaps even schizophrenic, who was possessed of a clever ability to convince thousands of people that his delusions were reality.
• Fourth, if none of these three scenarios is true, then it is reasonable to conclude that Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was what he appeared to be: namely, one of the most significant figures in Christian history, a man of prophetic and apostolic stature, who, through great personal holiness, enlightened wisdom, and spiritual gifts inexplicable by science, tended to confirm the truth of the Gospels and the veracity of historical Christianity to an indifferent and unbelieving age; a man capable of conveying to an extraordinary extent a sense of God’s love and care; an evangelist who never conducted a crusade, and who, without traveling more than a few miles from his friary in a half-century, seemed capable of transforming lives to a degree unimagined by the most successful of preachers.
Padre Pio’s life is remarkably well-supported by good primary evidence. Admittedly, there are difficulties in proving certain aspects with documentary evidence. Padre Alessio Parente (1933–2000), who was one of Padre Pio’s companions and assistants in the last years of his life, recalled: “We didn’t have time to write things down. At night we were so stressed and so tired that we didn’t have five minutes to put a pen in our hands. We went straight to bed. That’s why I never put any notes down. I’m sorry now, for being at Padre Pio’s side, I could have noticed every movement, every word he said. I tried to tape him, but he knew [and would not cooperate].” Yet Alessio and other friars did, on occasion, succeed in taking down his conversations.
Father Dominic Meyer, who served as Padre Pio’s English- and German-language secretary for more than a decade, wrote in one of his circular letters to family and friends in America: “As to newspaper accounts: how often have not the superiors of Padre Pio been asked to clarify statements by journalists that were positively false, exaggerated misrepresentations of the truth. [Alberto] Del Fante [an Italian writer] collected many such newspaper accounts, sometimes several of the same event. Comparing these — on the same event — one sees how unreliable they are…. There were not only misrepresentations of the truth, there were lies, calumnies. Newspaper reports taken alone are not a source of history. They must be checked and double-checked.”
Father Dominic was also skeptical about the testimony of some of Padre Pio’s friends. “We have plenty experience with such testimony,” he wrote. “Not all who speak about Padre Pio and their experience are trustworthy. Some, wishing to pose as special friends of the Padre, have told the most incredible stories about him. Others, giving free vent to their imagination, have exaggerated, added, misunderstood, and misconstrued events. They probably did not want to lie. But they were such who could not think straight and mixed too much of their own into the story.”
While many newspaper accounts and much oral history must be taken with a grain of salt, there are solid and substantial sources. Chief of these are Padre Pio’s own letters, in four volumes, written to his spiritual advisers, spiritual children, and friends and colleagues. To corroborate these are the diaries and memoranda of several of Padre Pio’s confreres, notably Padre Agostino Daniele of San Marco in Lamis, who kept a journal, off and on, for fifty years. Of special value are the letters that Father Dominic, who was generally regarded as a somewhat skeptical man, wrote to his family between 1948 and 1958 — notably to his cousin Albert Meyer, who became cardinal-archbishop of Chicago. Also oral and written testimony by priests, physicians, and other educated persons, which corroborate accounts by persons whose humble background and lack of education would naturally render them suspect by the sophisticated. Father Dominic, after dismissing as rubbish much of the material written about Padre Pio, nevertheless concluded that when one looked at the actual events of his life, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Moreover, in recent years the Vatican archives have made accessible documents from the pontificates of Benedict XV and Pius XI, among which are the records of a thorough investigation in the early 1920s by Monsignor Carlo Rossi from the Holy Office (or Inquisition).
The life of Padre Pio is, to be sure, replete with events that seem strange, even incredible to the average reader, but it is also a life of a real human being with real emotions, real joys, real sorrows, and real defects as well, who strove in his day to serve his fellow human beings by addressing their spiritual as well as physical needs.
Chapter One
The Roots of a Saint
Pietrelcina
A little town of about four thousand souls, Pietrelcina — the birthplace of Padre Pio — lies some six miles northeast of the city of Benevento, the capital of the province of the same name. It is about forty miles northeast of the city of Naples in a region of southern Italy known as Campania. Over the years, the town, which grew up around an ancient castle, has been called Petrapolcina, Petrapolicina, Pretapucina, and, only since the eighteenth century, Pietra Elcina or Pietrelcina. Although most people think the word means “Little Rock” or “Little Oak,” no one seems to know for sure.
In 1860, the province of Benevento, until then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose prime minister, Camillo Benso, Count Cavour, created a united Kingdom of Italy the following year. A quarter-century later, Italy, a nation of twenty-eight million, was really two separate countries. While northern Italy (the area from Rome north to the Alps) was rapidly urbanizing and industrializing, the south, called the Mezzogiorno, remained socially, agriculturally, and economically depressed. In Pietrelcina, as in most parts of the south, the vast majority of the populace was illiterate and so isolated that many peasants still did not know that they were citizens of a united Italy.1
The census returns of 1881 revealed that only forty-six of every one thousand inhabitants in southern Italy were sharecroppers, and only fifty-nine were peasant proprietors. Most of the people were landless, employed seasonally as farm laborers, who lived from hand to mouth. They subsisted largely on a diet of rice, bread, pasta, and cornmeal, with almost no meat, and they were generally so unhealthy that few of their young men were found fit for military service. Malaria, pellagra, and tuberculosis were widespread, child mortality was astronomical,