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Catholic Saints
St. Padre Pio
00:30:58
Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Sean Innerst discuss the great saint of the 20th century, Padre Pio.
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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B
Welcome to form Now, I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and Joining me is Dr. Sean Innerstadt, who is a good friend, a teacher here at the Augustine Institute, as well as a professor at St John Vianney Theological Seminary here in Denver. And it's a joy to have him on. We're going to talk about Padre Pio. And so Padre Pio, this great towering Saint of the 20th century, he comes at a time during his lifetime. There's two great wars. He's right there in Italy, right in the middle of it all, and yet in this time where it's seems that God has forsaken the world and there's all this bloodshed and conflict and violence and this movement away from God, there's this incredible outpouring of God's grace in the life of Padre Pio for the sake of the world. And so I think there's not a lot of accidents in terms of why he is such a man of incredible mysticism and grace and miracles. I mean, he's really known as kind of the. I mean, there's not many saints who are so associated with miracles as Padre Pio.
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C
Oh, absolutely. I sometimes, you know, offhandedly, maybe this isn't the best way to refer to his life, his, you know, the miraculous quality of his life. But I sometimes refer to him as the Three Ring Circus of mystical phenomena, because he. Almost every gift that one can have, he had in spades, in spades. Yeah, dramatically and for a long period of time. So he was nothing but an instrument of God's sovereignty and power and love. And it worked its way through these mystical phenomena which just mount up almost without limit in the life of Padre Pio.
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B
Well, where's the best place to start? He's such an amazing character and just such a dramatic story. I know a friend gave me collected writings, his letters for spiritual direction, and I remember reading through those and being moved. How deeply biblical as well as practical and direct. I mean, he was very concrete, direct, and yet deeply spiritual at the same time. It's a unique combination that he had.
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C
Yeah, yeah. He very much was a figure with his feet on the ground, even though he experienced all these mystical phenomena. He was born in a small farming community in Pietrocina. He's called Saint Pio of Pietrelcina.
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B
Port town, right?
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C
Yeah, it's a small town.
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B
Small port town, southern Italy.
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C
Yeah, that's right. And the given name, Francis Francesco Forgione. And he. So he comes from just very simple roots, and he never lost that. He was a very commonsensical mystic in many ways, man of great humor. You know, we're going to hear that he suffered greatly throughout his life, but he was capable of amusing his confreres at the friary. And Giovanni Rotondo.
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B
Yeah, he loved humor. I mean, one of his friars that he was in the monastery with told the story that he loved to tell, the story of a poor peasant farmer going on a train ride.
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C
How many of you heard that? Yes, yes, I have heard this.
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B
And the peasant farmer sees this train going. He had never been on it, and he wanted to get on it. So he goes to the ticket booth, and there's all these stories of him trying to get a ticket. She said, well, where are you going? You're being nosy, aren't you?
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C
How do you want to know where I'm going?
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B
And so he's just not used to this. And then she says, well, I've got to give you a return trip. I've got to book a return trip. And he didn't know what that was. And then she had to explain what a return ticket was and return trip. So he gets on the train, and then he ends up sitting in front of this priest. A bishop. A bishop. Oh, it's a bishop. Okay, It's a bishop of the story. And then they go through this big tunnel, and everything goes dark. And then the bishop tells him the joke's with him.
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C
We're going to hell.
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B
We're going to hell. And then he says, your excellency, it's okay. I have a return ticket.
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C
You must be very frightened, your excellency, but I have a return ticket.
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B
I have a return ticket. But the levity, the sense of humor that Padre Pio had, and yet he took sin very seriously. He led an ascetical life. He's willing to fast and make sacrifices all the time.
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C
Yes, very much so. And he made an offer of himself, apparently from a very young age, but especially after his ordination to the priesthood. In his letters to his spiritual director, he spoke about his desire to give his life entirely to Christ as a victim, and that Christ takes him up on the offer. Of course, it's Christ who inspires him with the desire. First that's a grace, but then gives him this lifelong grace of making up in his own body what is lacking to the sufferings of Christ.
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B
To cite St. Paul, well, you know, I don't want to jump too far ahead and get to the heart of the thing. But that just brings up the point that his willingness to be a victim, Sean, and his suffering. And we'll talk about the nature of that suffering. And what strikes me about Padre Pio is both him being a victim for Christ and his suffering, and the grace that just seems to pour out of this man. I mean, the miracles and the grace, and it could be the miracle of conversion of hardened people who then come to confession and go through radical. I mean, there's those kinds of great miracles and there's the miracles of healing and, you know, prophecy. I mean, just everything. Like you said, he's got. Every prophetic trick in the book is he's got it. You know, he's covered those bases. But it seems to me that he shows that there is a power in suffering.
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C
Right.
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B
That there's a. That, you know, we so are afraid of suffering. We're afraid of the Church suffering, we're afraid of ourselves suffering. And yet when he embraces it boldly for faith in Christ and offers it up, it becomes this incredible channel of grace.
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C
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's a beautiful insight. It really is a case of that surrender to the passion which is the very source of all saving grace. Right. So he so conforms himself to Christ, Christ so conforms him to his own self offering that he becomes a dramatic conduit of the graces which flow from the paschal mystery, Christ's own paschal mystery. So he becomes an open channel. There are no impediments, there are no barriers to the movement of grace in the life of this priest who is so completely conformed to Christ crucified in every detail.
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B
Well, I know he gets drafted during World War I, and because he's so sickly and he keeps getting sick, that they put him in the medical corps and then he gets discharged and then they bring him back, I think in 1918, they bring him back into the medical corps again. And anything of note during that period? I mean, what a time of great interruption for his early priestly career.
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C
Yeah. And it would have been characteristic, I suppose, of Italy at that time, that they didn't care much for priests.
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B
Yeah, you would think a priest would be exempt from military service, and that.
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C
Would be our common experience in this country. And in a country that was so thoroughly Catholic, you would think that would be the case there, too. But that wasn't the case in Italy at the time. So he is conscripted, but as you say, he is so ill. And this happens throughout his young life. After he's originally ordained, they send him home to Pietro Cina, his hometown, after having been at the novitiate and at several friaries and then preparing through studies for ordination. He's sent home because they think he's dying. And he spikes these fevers which break thermometers. So literally no natural explanation.
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B
People.
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C
People can't endure fevers of 120 degrees. I think there was one of 140 degrees.
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B
Wow.
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C
Yeah. So he was too hot to touch. People couldn't touch him. But this was part of his. The anticipation of his complete confirmation to Christ later on.
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B
Purgatory on earth.
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C
Purgatory on earth. He was. Yes, he was experiencing purgatorial fire in his own flesh. And they were so sure that this signaled impending death, that he was basically sent home to be with his parents as he passed from this life. But he continued to pray. He said Mass in his hometown, and apparently the Masses were so long that not that many people could attend. Right. They would start. They would go to Mass and find that it was going to take two hours and would have to go to work. His parish priest at the time remarked on his sanctity, said that his Mass was just a mystery. He said a mystery of once again, confirmation to Christ. The priest living out Christ's self offering in the Mass. But that foiled the government's plans. God had a different plan. And so his infirmities got him excused from military service, and he ended up back home and ended up receiving the stigmata in the year 1918. So the year that the First World War ended.
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B
Let's talk about the stigmata. And for a lot of people, they're not sure what that means. And of course, we have. St. Francis has this experience. But why don't you just describe. Because it's pretty literal and physical for Padre Pio.
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C
Yes. Yes, very much so. St. Francis had earlier experienced a vision with a seraphim and who seemed to have Christ in its wings. It was Christ himself, of course. And Francis had had this experience.
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B
And what's so unique is, though, this is at the end of Francis life.
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C
Yes.
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B
That he gets the stigmata. I mean, the very end. I mean, he's sickly, he's older now. This is the very end of his life. And it's kind of like the crowning, anointing of Francis. Right. For him, that Christ is giving this stigmata on Francis to show that this man has conformed himself to his crucified Lord in such a unique way that he's given the gift of having the five wounds of Christ.
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C
Yes, that's right. Padre Pio apparently received it first mystically and had it for years, by which we mean he felt the pain but didn't have the wounds, and already beginning when he was a younger priest. But it would come and go in the year 1918 and three days after the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis, which happens to be today, on the day we're filming this video, it's Normally celebrated on September 6th, 17th. St. Francis received the wounds, the stigmata, as you say, near the end of his life on September 14, which is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. But the Franciscans celebrate it three days later.
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B
Oh, really?
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C
Yeah, because it's. Because they want him to have his own feast day. He's pushed out of the way by Christ.
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B
I didn't realize that is rightly the case.
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C
But then three days later, Padre Pio, three days after that feast, Padre Pio receives this on September 20th and once again falls into an ecstasy and wakes up with his hands and feet bleeding in his side.
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B
And when you see pictures, I mean, his hands were serious. It's not like a small hole.
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C
No, they were gaping holes that were. Yes, they were nail sized holes.
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B
Yeah, large nail sized holes.
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C
They would occasionally form little coverings, sort of skin coverings that looked almost like large blood blisters. And then they would burst again and then they would go. This, this would happen over and over again, apparently. But they would never heal, they never got infected. They were tested innumerable times by doctors. He was very much troubled by physicians who would try and disprove, you know, the phenomena of the stigmata. So it's a very interesting thing. And I guess the point you were pushing towards as regards Francis receiving them late in life.
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B
Yeah, yeah. For Padre Pio, it's a whole different, in a sense, literally cross for Padre Pio to get this in his prime young. And it makes it, as Paul would say about Himself in 1 Corinthians 4, that God has made us apostles a spectacle to the world. And it really made Padre Pio a spectacle to the world. And that's not always a nice thing to be a spectacle.
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C
Yeah, he was very impatient with that and didn't quite understand it. It was part of his simplicity that he didn't quite recognize what was going on to him. As a matter of fact, people asked about the mystical phenomena. He said, they're a mystery to me too. He didn't understand the mystery of biolocation. He knew it was happening, apparently, that he could be seen in two places at the same time, caring for somebody in a hospital at the same time that he was still in the friary and seen in the choir at the very hour. And this happened innumerable times in his life. But he couldn't see it. He couldn't and he didn't. It never puffed him up. There's a famous story of Padre Pio being called to the loggia, you know, the balcony of the friary, on one of these days when people were gathering to see Padre Pio, and there was a large crowd gathered outside. And he said to the brother who was standing next to him, what are all these people doing here? And the brother said, father, they're here to see you, of course. And he said, if they only knew, and put his head in his hands and walked away. He couldn't imagine that people would gather to see him, even though he was perfectly aware that these things were happening around him and in him all the time. But God, in a certain sense, hides, you know, the magnitude of the sanctity of the saints from them so that they don't become puffed up. They can retain their humility. And so, yeah, it's a remarkable. It's a remarkable irony, as you say, to be a spectacle, but to have no sense of one's own grandeur or importance. It's really the opposite of what we see in the world. But that's what we find in Padre Pio, a man who is puzzled over his own celebrity.
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B
One of the stories about Padre Pio, there's so many, many. But, you know, after. After World War II, and even during World War II, people would come to him. He had the gift of prophecy. And so mothers would be like, I'm praying for my son who's in military. And he would pray and say, your son's going to live and survive. And that would happen. And there were sad occasions where he told them that they weren't, but they prayed for their soul. So there are amazing stories with that.
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C
Oh, and once again, so many. And he became a celebrity, especially in Italy, but elsewhere, too, there are many stories of famous Italian celebrities going to visit Padre Pio, some of them being converted and some not. Some of them found him too challenging. And one of the characteristics of Padre Pio, that he was dead honest to everyone. He didn't sugarcoat anything. And this was characteristic of not just the prophecies. He just told you the bold truth. This is what God makes clear to me. But he would Also read souls in the confessional. He spent hours and hours in the confessional every day and would routinely tell people their sins. You forgot this. Some people never even got the chance to even begin their confessions. He would declare to them the very reason why they were there and sort out the problem for them. Sometimes he would scold them for a lack of contrition or a blind spot in their moral life. And almost everyone, not every soul, but, you know, because it's a mystery of freedom. But many people were converted and deeply changed by this insight that he was given. And that's infused knowledge. It's not a human gift God is simply giving him to know what God knows about the soul of that person. So it's a clear manifestation of the divine power. It's not something that someone can even mimic.
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B
Well, one of the times that there was this infused knowledge, a story that to me is so remarkable, is that a young priest comes down while studying in Rome, and this young priest is going to be told something pretty serious. Do you want to tell that story?
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C
I think I know where you're going with this. Yeah. A young priest named Karol Wojtywa from Poland. From Poland. So after the war, after World War II, he was in Poland under the Nazis, had to secretly attend seminary, but after the war, he was able to go to Rome to study and to get a doctorate at the Angelicum. And apparently during that time, he went to see Padre Pio. And Padre Pio apparently gave him an intimation that he had a. A very bright ecclesiastical future.
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B
Yeah. I mean, according to the story Padre Pio tells me, you will one day be pope.
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C
Yes.
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B
And that's not something that happens very often. I mean, to say that you'll be bishop, that would be a big prophecy. But to say that you're going to be the Pope someday, and you think about why would God reveal that to Carl Wojtea at a young age in his early priesthood? But, you know, my reflection on that, I'd love to hear what yours is, that he lets him know his future vocation in order to prepare Carl Wojtia. I mean, he's got a very special mission. He's not just going to be Pope, but he's going to be a. I think a particular Pope. I mean, we talk about him being John Paul the Great. I mean, one of the greatest popes in the history. There's a handful of popes that have that kind of impact that he has, and God's preparing his heart, and also it becomes a prophetic sign. Of you know that Padre Pio was a true prophet.
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C
Yes, exactly. So Karel Wojtyla, later, St. John Paul II is going to first beatify and then canonize Padre Pio and had a personal reason for recognizing the sanctity of this man. As you have noted, and I would agree with you, I think Padre Pio, one of the things that's clear from his letters and his interactions with church authorities, which were sometimes difficult because he was persecuted by the Church, this is often the case in the Lives of the Saints that we're not just persecuted by evil men, we're sometimes persecuted by good men. We don't understand.
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B
Our Lord was persecuted by the Church authority of his own day.
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C
That's right. That's right. Yeah. So Padre Pio struggled. He always, very obediently, he was always perfectly obedient, docile to the direction of Church authority. And that included two years when he was actually forbidden from saying Mass publicly and hearing confessions he wasn't allowed to under another pope, an earlier pope. And. And his notoriety, and so also his favor in the eyes of some high churchman waxed and waned over the years because it's a 50 year long process of this confirmation to Christ through the stigmata and all the other sufferings that he endured in that 50 years. One author calls it 50 years of thorns and roses. You know, and it really is that. I think that's a beautiful description. And so Pope John Paul ii, I think was probably a kind of gift to Padre Pio. Right. He saw that the Church was troubled. You mentioned that in your introduction. Right. That all the saints are saints for our times. You know, there are always particular gifts that God gives us in the life of the church in our day. Once again, grace is freely given, a particular gift for the world. And Padre Pio is that. I think God gave Padre Pio a little light in the person of JP2. Right. This man, this pole, he's very different. Not that we're criticizing prior papacies, but this man is going to be a powerhouse, a spiritual powerhouse in the life of the Church. And I think that was a beacon of hope for Padre Pio too.
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B
That's beautiful. It's kind of like Samuel being told that David is going to be king.
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C
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Right, exactly. So the prophet Samuel.
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C
Very good.
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B
Gets a vision of the Lord's anointed.
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C
Yeah, that's right. That's coming.
- [23:21]
B
I like that. Wow. For people who Padre Pio took this unexpected suffering that he would oftentimes get various illnesses and persecution, different things, but he always took that suffering and made something beautiful with it by offering it to God. How can people today, Sean, people in our audience who experience suffering, how can they use that for the kingdom and for something beautiful for our Lord?
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C
Yeah, this is. This is a critical question in our own day, because suffering is not popular among modern people. One author notes that when Padre Pio went to the novitiate, the sign that was not over the door, but in a stairway that the novices would go up as they entered said, penance or hell. Hmm. Wow.
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B
I choose penance.
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C
Yeah. I would choose penance. Yeah. Now, to us, that sounds rigid, right? It sounds fierce. But that was the spirituality of Franciscanism throughout its history, and Padre Pio was raised in that. I remember Father Groeschel, who was a Capuchin, who then became the founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, speaking about as a Capuchin, as a young Capuchin, when he approached vows, the person who was preaching the Mass as they took their first vows preached that poverty, chastity, and obedience are the three nails that affix Christ to the cross, Right? So it's a confirmation to Christ in his suffering, not for the sake of suffering itself, but for the fruitfulness that comes from the gift that Christ gives and which he presents to us as the enduring icon of a loving gift of self. It's the point you made before, right? In Padre Pio's life, because he's conformed to suffering, he so surrenders himself that there are no obstacles to the movement of grace and somebody who is able, under the weight of suffering, to surrender themselves, to recognize in it a share in Christ's own suffering. As St. John Paul himself says in Salvifici Doloris, his beautiful. His beautiful encyclical on suffering, Christ opens up the salvific power of the Passion to those who embrace him in their own sufferings. So it becomes a new means by which we enter into closer relationship with God and a gift that we can offer for others. In accord with that quote that we mentioned from Colossians before, right? As St. Paul said, I make up in my sufferings, right? What is lacking to the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church. That is the paradigm that Padre Pio expresses.
- [26:37]
B
You could say, yeah, no, I mean, like our Lord, like St. Francis, this all bears the fruit, as you said, of love. I mean, penance sounds penitential, it sounds dark, it sounds anti human, but it's not. And actually, once you embrace suffering and give it to Christ, he's able to take it and do the work of changing hearts.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Now, I know, Sean, that you have a devotion to Padre Pio, but I don't know why. So tell me, why were you drawn to Padre?
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C
Well, I credit him with my conversion. So I was raised a Quaker, the official title being the American Society of Friends. And for the Quakers, St. Francis was about the only acceptable saint, really, because they think of him as a pacifist environmentalist, and so they sort of have their own version of St. Francis. But I remember my Quaker family members having books on St. Francis on their bookshelf.
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B
Oh, interesting.
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C
But my father converted to Catholicism, and he didn't press it on the kids. He was very private in his faith. Still Quaker. Yeah. But he left books around. He put up a crucifixion, and he left books on the shelves. And two books I picked up. One was a biography of. Well, first I started reading the New Testament more deeply and listening to Bach, actually. And that sort of Catholicized my thinking, you might say. But I read the New Testament and I fell in love with Jesus. I found this book on St. Francis, and I read that, and I fell in love with Francis. And here's a second crucified man, you know, And I was stunned by the fact that there was all this Catholic stuff around Francis, stuff that I. That was unfamiliar to me, but very evocative and exotic and interesting. And then I found a book about Padre Pio, I think, written by Pascal Parente. And it was a very small book, but. But I was shocked to find that there were three crucified men. And so Padre Pio, who had only died. This was in the early 70s when I started picking up these books. I was a young high school student, and I was captivated by these three crucified men. And it wasn't hard to make me Catholic because I just drew a line between these three. Three crucified persons, you might say. And it led straight into the Catholic Church. And so I have always considered myself to be a kind of spiritual son of Padre Pio. And he promised that he would get all his spiritual children into heaven. So I trust in his intercession still to this day.
- [29:35]
B
Yeah. What a beautiful promise and story. It's just amazing. I love the image of the three crucified men, Francis and Padre Pio, crucified in conformity to Christ. And, you know, I think my last thought on Padre Pio is that in this time of great darkness, of World War I and World War II, when the world thought that God had left and abandoned the world. God was very much acting in the world and in the suffering that was going on in the world, and Padre Pio is a witness to that. And even in our own times, we can think that God has forsaken us. And as the nations rage and there's different troubles and tribulations, God's still very much present. We just have to call upon him especially to offer up our suffering and bringing God's grace to the world. That's what we need to do today. May Padre Pio pray for us. God bless you.
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A
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