Francesco Forgione

Italian religious leader and social reformer

• Born: May 25, 1887
• Birthplace: Pietrelcina, Italy
• Died: September 23, 1968
• Place of death: San Giovanni Rotondo, Foggia, Italy

Forgione, also known as Padre Pio, was a Roman Catholic priest who ministered to the poor and sick in his homeland of Italy and to those who traveled from all over the world to visit him. He was best known as a stigmatic and was canonized in 2002.

Early Life

Francesco Forgione (frahn-CHAYS-koh fohr-ZHYOH-neh) was born in southern Italy in the small farming town of Pietrelcina. His parents, Giuseppa and Grazio Forgione, were poor and illiterate but very devout Roman Catholics. His family was particularly religious and attended daily mass, prayed the rosary nightly, and fasted from meat at least three times a week in honor of the Virgin Mary. At the age of five, Forgione told his parents that he wanted to devote his life to God and did so by constantly praying, singing hymns, and making small sacrifices. For example, at night he slept in his parents’ one-room house with his head on a rock as a means of devotion to God. Forgione was frail and always ill, possibly with tuberculosis by age nine. He suffered pulmonary illness most of his life.

Forgione graduated grammar school at age ten and received his Catholic confirmation rites at age twelve. During this period, his father went to the United States to seek employment to send money back to Italy so that his son could fulfill his dream of becoming a priest. Throughout his childhood and into early adulthood, Forgione mentioned that he received visions from religious individuals, including Jesus. However, it was when he received a vision of Satan in the form of a black dog that he knew he had to commit his life to God.

On January 22, 1903, fifteen-year-old Forgione was admitted to the novitiate of the Capuchin Order of the Friars Minor in Morcone, Italy. On this day, he took the name Bra for brother and Pio in honor of Saint Pius V, the patron saint of his hometown of Pietrelcina. One year later to the day, Forgione took his sacred vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Next, he studied for six years at the seventeenth century friary of St. Francis of Assisi in Italy until his ordination as a priest on August 10, 1910, at the Cathedral of Benevento, Italy. Forgione was twenty-three years old when he was ordained.

Life’s Work

Forgione was no ordinary Catholic priest. Not only did he embody the teachings of the Catholic Church and Christian doctrine in general, but he also, more importantly, exemplified a profound depth of faith that ultimately fueled his ability and willingness to sacrifice and help countless men, women, and children from all walks of life. As he admitted, he was praying for all people regardless of religion, sickness, gender, age, socioeconomic status, or ethnicity. His true passion was to minister to the sick, suffering, and poor and to those many label as the lost souls, those who had never experienced the word and love of God. Furthermore, he contended that his only richness in life was in his poverty and his need to help others.

Forgione did not provide a usual Catholic liturgy. In fact, his liturgy became revered as a mysterious and unique spectacle because of his long contemplative pauses, filled sometimes with tears of sadness and joy, during his liturgical masses, pauses that many faithful followers conclude were his experiences reliving the Passion of Christ. During these periods of silence and moments of deep emotional turmoil and bliss, it is believed that he had direct engagement with not only Jesus but also the Virgin Mary and numerous saints. His church services would last hours and draw hundreds of parishioners each week.

Forgione’s day began at roughly 2:30 in the morning and ended usually at 10:30 in the evening. During his usual day, Forgione prayed in silence by himself for hours, heard countless confessions of his parishioners, and participated in daily masses with his fellow priests. As a sign of sacrifice to God, he would ingest only a few hundred calories a day, relying on prayer as his true sustenance for survival.

The number of his devoted followers increased exponentially after September 20, 1918, when, during silent solitary prayer, he experienced an anomaly faced by no other Catholic priest: The appearance on his body of the five bleeding wounds of Christ. The wounds, also called stigmata, appeared as small puncture lesions through both of Forgione’s hands and feet and through a wound in his side. These wounds seeped blood for more than fifty-two years, to the time of his death in 1968. All five wounds were investigated by both religious and secular scientists, leading the Church to remand Forgione for a brief time to solitude and prohibiting him from saying mass or interacting with his parishioners. Eventually, based on the outcry of his devoted followers, the Church allowed him to resume hearing confessions and saying mass. The countless investigations by hoards of scholars offered but one outcome: These wounds were not human made and were indeed causing Forgione to bleed almost daily.

It has been further discovered that Forgione had taken on the wounds of Christ up to one year after his ordination, in September, 1910, but the stigmata were kept secret until years later. After the stigmata’s initial appearance, Forgione had become very ill and was sent back to his hometown of Pietrelcina to recuperate. He remained there until 1916. Eventually, he was ordered to report to San Giovanni Rotondo, a mountainous agriculture community approximately one mile from Our Lady of Grace Friary, where he remained a priest for the duration of his career.

After the wounds appeared a second time, in 1918, the word spread throughout Italy and eventually throughout the world that this Italian Capuchin priest was granted many gifts from God, gifts no other Christian in history had ever been bestowed at one time. These gifts included the divine ability to bilocate, levitate, and understand people speaking different languages (languages he never learned), and the gift of healing the sick by touch. These many gifts, as recorded by the Catholic Church and by many secular scholars and scientists around the world, were responsible for countless miracles during his lifetime and after his death in 1968. His parishioners, both in Italy and from the four corners of the world, were deeply moved and captivated by his intense faith and miraculous healing gifts.

Millions of people during the course of Forgione’s ministry flocked to attend his masses. Annually, eight million pilgrims continue to visit his church. Forgione had received thousands of letters each week asking for his miraculous blessings from people with various inflictions. As recorded by the Catholic Church, these miracles include his healing of the sick and mentally tormented. As part of this recognition, the Church opened an official inquiry and commenced the process of canonization of Forgione. He was canonized on June 16, 2002, by Pope John Paul II, thirty-four years after his death at the age of eighty-one.

Significance

Forgione helped thousands of sick, poor, and otherwise downtrodden people by founding the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (House for the Relief of Suffering) in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, on May 5, 1956. This particular charitable hospital has served well over sixty thousand people a year. Forgione also started prayer groups that date as far back as the 1920’s and include well over 400,000 members worldwide.

Forgione, the humble yet miraculous Italian priest, dedicated his life to living and teaching the word of God. He is the only Catholic priest in the history of the Church to take on the stigmata, the five bleeding wounds of Christ. It is believed that his spiritual gifts, including the stigmata, led to countless miracles during his lifetime and after his death.

Bibliography

De Liso, Oscar. Padre Pio: The Stigmated Brother of Pietrelcina. New York: Phaedra, 1970. This work illuminates Forgione’s life. The descriptive nature of this text offers the reader a chance to truly understand Forgione and what he accomplished through his life and his divine faith.

Dimond, Michael. Padre Pio: A Catholic Priest Who Worked Miracles and Bore the Wounds of Jesus Christ on His Body. Fillmore, N.Y.: Most Holy Family Monastery, 2006. A brief work on Forgione’s spiritual work.

Gallagher, Jim. Padre Pio: The Pierced Priest. London: Fount, 1995. A biographical account of Forgione’s life as a stigmatic priest.

Gaudiose, Dorothy M. Prophet of the People: A Biography of Padre Pio. New York: Alba House, 1974. The author offers an insightful look into the entire life of Forgione. Touching on the many miraculous details of his life and death, this work offers an accurate account.

Ruffin, C. Bernard. Padre Pio: The True Story. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1991. This best-selling account of Forgione gives an in-depth look at the life of and events surrounding one of the most pious individuals of all times.