Saint Padre Pio: crucified by Love

Padre Pio, a Capuchin friar from the Puglia region of southern Italy, received the stigmata of the Passion in 1918. He received the wounds of Jesus Crucified, who appeared to him and invited him to unite himself to his Passion and participate in the salvation of sinners. These wounds remained visible until the day he died, half a century later in 1968. They were very different from natural wounds in terms of their clinical course, and were painful, but did not prevent him to carry on his priestly ministry.

Padre Pio wearing the stigmata, photo taken in the 1940s / © Jornal O Bom Católico, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Les raisons d'y croire :

The way in which the wounds appeared - on the hands, feet, head (crown of thorns), side (lance wound) and right shoulder - defies science: they all appeared together "in a split second", ruling out the idea of a natural origin, religious "auto-suggestion" or a psychiatric symptom.

From 1919 onwards, Padre Pio's stigmata were the subject of numerous medical analyses, carried out by half a dozen medical experts (Doctors Amico Bignani, Giorgio Festa, Luigi Romanelli, Alberto Caserta, Agostino Gemelli, and others). With the exception of one, they all concluded that the wounds were not caused by external trauma (natural or voluntary) and that they did not follow the normal changes observed in natural epidermal wounds.

Dr Romanelli examined Padre Pio a total of five times, in 1919 and 1920: he observed a perfect constancy of the phenomenon from one time to the next. The stigmata could not have a natural origin because, unlike the usual epidermal wounds, they opened and closed without any human intervention; moreover, they never became infected or suppurative.

In 1920 and 1925, Doctor Festa met Padre Pio on several occasions in San Giovanni Rotondo. He also operated on the saint twice (for an inguinal hernia in 1925, then for a cyst in 1927). In 1938, he published the results of his analyses of the wounds, stating that they were "a mystery to science".

No one could have secretly caused, hidden and maintained such deep wounds for half a century! All the more so since the saint was so well known: over his lifetime, it is estimated that twenty million people attended his Masses and five million went to confession with him. It is quite impossible to maintain a deception of this magnitude for so long and in front of so many witnesses.

By applying a thumb in the saint's palm and an index finger on the back of his hand, one could feel a "gap", revealing the depth of the wound which, if it had been caused deliberately, would have caused a life-threatening infection, something that never happened.

The wounds on his hands, feet and side stayed bloody every day for half a century - something that science still can't explain. What's more, a glass's worth of arterial blood leaked from the side wound alone every day, which is an unusually large quantity for a natural wound.

The blood type flowing from the wounds was identified as AB, a rare category, identical to that found on the Shroud of Turin and in the miraculous host of Lanciano.

There was no point (psychological or material) for the young religious of 1918 to invent such a story. In fact, Padre Pio's stigmata only brought him a long series of difficulties and persecutions, including to the people who were close to him, until 1964! Padre Pio never paid much attention to his stigmata and continued to exercise his ministry in permanent humility.

Critics that presents Padre Pio as a false, hysterical mystic who self-mutilated to draw attention to himself, do not have any evidence. Padre Pio's whole life speaks for itself: he had a sound mind, common sense, exceptional charity, behaved in obedience to his superiors and bishops, was an excellent administrator and manager of the hospital he founded, and so on.

Numerous testimonies collected throughout the saint's life show that he was very cautious with regard to unexplained phenomena. Until his death in 1968, there is no testimony (oral, recorded, or even the testimony of a third party) suggesting that he was attracted to the paranormal, or suffered from mythomania.

From a theological standpoint, Padre Pio's stigmata are a marvellous illustration of his spirituality: bearing the cross with Jesus, in prayer, solitude and the regular life of the cloister, he participated in the Lord' Passion in an exceptional way. Padre Pio saw himself as a "a humble brother who prays", and nothing else.

The way in which the saint describes the sudden appearance of the stigmata in 1918 (vision of an angelic being, then of Christ) is very similar to the other accounts we have, dating from the 13th century up until now, from all religious backgrounds (priests, monks, hermits, beguines).

Padre Pio could not have invented such a story. He made a distinction between the "supernatural" (invisible) and the "extraordinary" (sensible), and saw in the wounds not a somatic disorder but a visible sign of an invisible "grace". This story is in harmony with the Church's theology and doctrine, told from a perspective of faith and correlated with the sufferings of Jesus. Did Padre Pio seek to imitate another stigmatised person, such as Teresa of Avila, for instance? He did not: his exposure to books was very limited and this idea doesn't explain how he could have pulled off such a hoax for 50 years under public and medical scrutiny.

The wounds disappeared unexpectedly just a few moments after his death, without any human intervention whatsoever. No physiological, dermatological, neurological or psychiatric explanation has everbeen able to explain the origin or the end of this stigmatisation.

Padre Pio has been honoured by the Church at the highest levels since the pontificate of Saint Paul VI. The latter openly defended the saint by lifting all previous sanctions. He was beatified on 2 May 1999 and canonised on 16 June 2002.

Since his death in 1968, not a single voice has been raised, either in the Church or in scientific circles, against the authenticity of the stigmata, and no one - among historians and psychiatrists - has identified any fraudulent behaviour on the part of Padre Pio.

The stigmata Padre Pio bore were not the only supernatural event in his life. The saint's life was punctuated with prodigious events, all of which have been recorded by thousands of reliable witnesses: ecstasies, soul-reading, bilocations, prophecies, the gift of healing, extraordinary perfumes, diabolical attacks, incorruption of the body since 1968, etc. On 20 March 1983, the preliminary investigation for the beatification process began. Seven years later, the Church had authenticated seventy-three miracles, grouped together in 104 typed volumes.

Synthèse :

Born in 1887 in Pietrelcina, southern Italy, Francesco Forgione turned to the religious life as a teenager. He entered the Capuchin novitiate in Morcone in 1903 and took temporary vows the following year, followed by solemn vows on 27 January 1907. On 10 August 1910, he was ordained a priest and began to feel pain in his hands and feet, although no injury had yet appeared by then.

The young priest began to experience a number of extraordinary phenomena: soul readings, visions, bilocations, and so on. It wasn't long before he became a much sought-after confessor. Thousands of faithful flocked to the Franciscan convent of San Giovanni Rotondo. He took no notice of these mystical manifestations and continued to exercise his ministry in permanent humility.

On 5 August 1918, he received his first "wound of love": it felt like "an arrow of fire". He saw a "celestial being"holding in his hands a "long lance with a point", from which came something "likefire". The friar was struck by this burning point and felt its physical and moral effects very intensely. This is called "transverberation", a phenomenon known at least since Saint Teresa of Avila. His account is not metaphorical, still less allegorical: it is that of a tangible fact whose material aspect must not obscure its authentic meaning: an exceptional participation in the sufferings of Jesus crucified.

On the following 20th September, at about ten o'clock in the morning, Padre Pio fell into ecstasy and saw a "mysterious figure" bleeding from the hands, feet and side. The figure disappeared after a few seconds. When the saint came to, he saw that his hands, feet and side were "pierced " and "bleeding profusely".

He later discovered that his shoulder bore the mark of Jesus' cross. The wound caused by the crown of thorns bled almost daily for fifty years, at every Mass the priest celebrated. The wounds on the hands were located on the third metacarpal. They were about two centimetres in diameter and, like those on the feet, were deep, since the epidermis was pierced right through. The one on the side (cf. Jn 19:34) consisted of a double cut forming a kind of cross in the left side of the chest: one measured 7 centimetres and the other (from the fifth to the ninth rib), perpendicular to the first, about 3.5 centimetres.

The ecclesiastical authorities, starting with the Capuchin superiors, ordered medical examinations. Between 1919 and 1920, a good half-dozen doctors attended the father's bedside. With the exception of Dr Alfredo Gemelli, most of them considered that the origin of the wounds was not linked to external trauma (self-mutilation) and that they did not follow the evolutionary process of natural epidermal wounds.

Doctor Luigi Romanelli, for example, visited the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo five times. He declared: "In the palmar areas of both hands [...], there is a wine-red pigmentation of the skin over an area the size of a fifty-cent bronze coin on the right hand and two cents on the left. The perimeter is slightly swollen. The shape is almost circular. The size of these holes could have been caused by a nail used for crucifixion, since nailing was the most common practice at the time." (cf. Pierre Barbet, La Passion de Jésus-Christ selon le chirurgien, 14th edition, Paris, Mediaspaul, 2003, p. 72-74).

Padre Pio's stigmata are said to be "imitative", in the sense that they imitate most artistic representations of the wounds of Jesus on the cross. Only the authentic location changes: Jesus was crucified in the carpals and not in the palms of his hands, as the Latin iconographic tradition illustrates, because otherwise the mass of his body would have led to rapid tearing of the flesh.

However, these deep and very painful wounds never slowed the saint down in the exercise of his ministry. He celebrated Mass every morning, heard confessions for up to twelve hours a day (each penitent in line had to be given a number!), and managed to build an efficient hospital, all the while leading an exceptional spiritual life from every point of view, against a backdrop of persecution deliberately orchestrated against him, his "popularity" being too great in the opinion of his critics. He was then forbidden to celebrate Mass in public, had his mail opened and had microphones installed in his confessional. Never once did he rebel or simply oppose these orders. He put up with everything as if it were a grace from heaven.

On 14 October 1954, Doctor Alberto Caserta from Foggia took several X-rays of the Capuchin's body. The examination, "carried out in dorsopalmar projection, on both hands and feet, did not reveal any interruption of the bone structure" which definitively contradicts the hypothesis of self-mutilation.

In 2007,the Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto believed he had found the proof of the saint's wilful deception. In the Vatican archives, he discovered a 1919 document from a pharmacy in Puglia, explaining that Padre Pio had ordered four grams of carbolic acid "in the greatest secrecy" to disinfect the syringes used to vaccinate the monks against Spanish flu. However, this is a moot point: this chemical, also known as hydroxybenzene acid, is highly corrosive. A 1% aqueous solution causes severe irritation in humans. At higher doses, the product is fatal. The Nazis killed many prisoners by injecting them with hydroxybenzene. Given these properties, it is hard to imagine why (or how) Padre Pio would have used such a harmful substance on himself.

Although some of his religious brothers did not like him, he was admired by many people, from the lowest to the highest classes of society, starting with Pope Benedict XV, then by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II. In 1948, a young Polish seminarian studying in Rome visited Padre Pio for the first time. Before he had time to open his mouth, the Padre Pio said to him: "You'll be Pope one day!" The young man's name was Karol Wojtyla.

Padre Pio experienced his last human troubles in 1960, at a time when he was world-famous and had never left his convent. That year, the Holy Office restricted his public appearances. His popularity even disturbed public order in San Giovanni Rotondo! But this troublesome measure was lifted by Paul VI in 1964. From then on, Padre Pio redoubled his pastoral zeal. He died of a heart attack on 2 September 1968, probably caused by sheer exhaustion. An examination of his body just after his death showed that the stigmata had mysteriously disappeared, including all the scars!

Beatified in 1999, Padre Pio was raised to the altars on 16 June 2002, in the presence of an estimated 150,000 people. On 3 March 2008, the 40th anniversary of his death, the saint's body was exhumed and found to be perfectly preserved.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

Alongside the stigmata and so many extraordinary facts, documented, cross-checked and attested, Padre Pio's holiness can be measured by the scope of his charity. He gave himself to God by giving himself to others, by hearing confessions all day for half a century, by answering letters, and above all by praying for all those who came to him.

His charity is well known, despite rumours circulating about the large sums of money that passed through his hands... But he devoted all of the people's donations to the establishment of the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, a hospital equipped with the kind of high-tech medical equipment that southern Italy did not have in the 1950s.

Aller plus loin :

Padre Pio: The True Story by C. Bernard Ruffin, Our Sunday Visitor; 3rd ed. edition (September 21, 2018)

En savoir plus :

The article 1000 reasons to believe: "Saint Padre Pio: the wonders of God through a humble brother who prays ".
Padre Pio: Encounters With a Spiritual Daughter From Pietrelcina by Graziella DeNunzio Mandato, TAN Books (April 23, 2021)
Padre Pio and His Stigmata: A 28-Day Prayer Book Guide to Embracing Suffering with Faith from the Writings of Saint Pio by Michael Fide, Independently published (October 26, 2024)
Saint Padre Pio Speaks - Book 1: Pray by Marie-Josée Thibault, Abba Books LLC (April 11, 2023)
Saint Padre Pio Speaks - Book 2: The Eucharist Explained by Marie-Josée Thibault, Abba Books LLC (November 2, 2024)