Padre Pio

Francesco Forgione was born on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, a small hill town in the Campania region of southern Italy. He was the fourth of eight children in a devout peasant family; his father emigrated to America twice to earn money for the boy's education in a religious vocation. From childhood Francesco experienced visions and apparitions he believed were supernatural, and he entered the Capuchin Franciscan novitiate in 1903 at the age of fifteen. He took the name Pio. He was ordained a priest on August 10, 1910.

His early years in religious life were marked by chronic ill health — fevers, respiratory problems, and other ailments that repeatedly forced him to return home from his friary. In 1916 he was assigned permanently to the friary of Our Lady of Grace at San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

On September 20, 1918, while making his thanksgiving after Mass, he received the visible stigmata — the five wounds corresponding to the Passion of Christ — on his hands, feet, and side. The wounds remained open and bleeding for fifty years, until his death, and were examined by numerous physicians, Vatican investigators, and Church authorities over that period. He was the first Catholic priest known to bear the stigmata.

He became one of the most sought-after confessors of the twentieth century, hearing confessions for up to sixteen hours a day. Thousands came to San Giovanni Rotondo to seek his counsel, and reports of healings, prophecies, bilocation, and reading of souls accumulated throughout his decades of ministry. In 1956 he founded Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza — the House for the Relief of Suffering — a hospital adjacent to the friary that grew into one of the largest medical centers in southern Italy.

He died on September 23, 1968, having celebrated his fiftieth anniversary of the stigmata just three days earlier. The wounds on his hands had closed completely at the time of death, leaving no scars. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 2, 1999, and canonized on June 16, 2002.