The pope, Padre Pio, and a miracle (Conclusion)

Photo by Kathleen Stauffer   Take a trip to Foggia Pictured above, Our Lady of Grace Church in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, welcomes thousands of spiritual seekers with a devotion to Padre Pio. Just beyond the oblong window in the smaller chapel (to the left of the Church) lies the site where Padre Pio received the stigmata while praying. When this small church could no longer accommodate the large crowds swarming to visit Pio, the larger church was built in the late 1950s. In pretty Foggia Province, where Padre Pio lived most of his life as a Capuchin friar, rambling stone fences follow the crests of rolling green hills. Neatly stacked field-stones form lazy curves that accommodate a road’s every turn, a hillside’s every contour. The sturdy walls support earthen tracts of olive trees and vineyards. And the well-scrubbed friars of San Giovanni Rotondo prayerfully reinforce the traditions of a 2,000-year-old Church. No one friar is supposed to stand out. Each makes a commitment to living a holy and joyful poverty, just as St. Francis recommends. It’s a quiet, meditative, reflective lifestyle. Sometimes, though, God has other plans. You can still find Padre Pio’s cell beyond the doors whose frosted glass windows are marked Clausura, the cloister of Our Lady of Grace Friary in San Giovanni Rotondo. Down a hallway lined with doors stands cell No. 5. A private chapel across the hall marks Padre Pio’s favorite retreat.  - Adapted from Padre Pio: An Intimate Portrait of a Saint Through The Eyes of His Friends by Kathleen Stauffer (23rd Publications / Catholic Digest)

READ PART 1 IN THE DECEMBER ISSUE OF CATHOLIC DIGEST OR CLICK HERE.

When Krakow bishop Karol Wojtyla heard that his dear friend, Dr. Wanda Poltawska, was seriously ill, he quickly penned an urgent letter to the Carmelite priest he had met 15 years earlier — Padre Pio, the mystic who was said to bear the wounds of Christ. Angelo Battisti, a friend of Padre Pio’s, rushed to deliver Wojtyla’s letter:

Without moving, Pio simply replied, “Open it and read it.” He listened in silence as Angelo Battisti read the letter, and remained silent for some time afterwards.

Venerable Father,
I ask for your prayers for a certain mother of four young girls … her health and even her life are in great danger due to cancer…

Battisti was now surprised that this missive had to be urgently delivered; it seemed similar to the torrent of requests about life-anddeath matters that daily reached Padre Pio, imploring his prayers. Finally, the Padre raised his head, and with a serious demeanor turned toward the messenger.

“Angelo, to this one (questo) it is not possible to say no!” Then he bowed his head as before and resumed praying.

Battisti understood that by using the term “questo,” a masculine pronoun, Pio was referring to the person (this one) who sent the letter. On the drive back to Rome, he thought about the many years he had known Padre Pio, and how every single word he wrote or spoke was carefully chosen and had a profound significance. He did not use the feminine “questa,” which would have referred to the request or to the letter itself. No, it was “questo” — he who sent it — who could not be refused.

But who was this Polish bishop? Though Battisti worked at the Secretariat of State, he had never heard of him. Nor had any of his colleagues. Why had Padre Pio considered him so important?

The operation to remove the tumor in Dr. Poltawska’s intestine was to take place on a Friday in late November 1962. On Saturday, Bishop Wojtyla telephoned the sick woman’s husband, Andrei, to learn whether or not the tumor had been malignant. Andrei started to explain that the operation never took

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place because the doctors had found that there was nothing they could do. The bishop immediately began to console his friend, believing that the cancer had been declared inoperable.

“Oh no, you do not understand,” Andrei interrupted. “The doctors are confronted with a mystery. They could not find anything.” The tumor, which had been previously confirmed by the doctors, had now completely disappeared. For Bishop Wojtyla, only one explanation for this cure was possible — Padre Pio’s prayers.

At the time, the Poltawskas knew nothing about their friend’s letter to the holy man, Padre Pio, and they did not find out until later. In fact, the couple had never heard of Padre Pio, since Poland was still a closed-off Iron Curtain country, and there was little opportunity for them to learn about events in the free world. Thus, at first Wanda attributed the results to the one-in-20 possibility that the mass was an inflammation that had healed on its own, and not a tumor at all.

Upon hearing the good news, Bishop Wojtyla composed a second letter to Padre Pio, this time thanking him for interceding before God for this mother of four children. In the letter, dated November 28 and written in Latin, Wojtyla clearly attributed the doctors’ failure to find any diseased tissue to divine intervention.

Venerable Father,
The woman living in Krakow, Poland, and mother of four children, on the twenty-first of
November, prior to the surgical operation, was suddenly cured. Thanks be to God! And also to you, Venerable Father, I offer thegreatest possible gratitude in the name of the woman, of her husband, and all of her family.
In Christ,
Karol Wojtyla
Capitular Bishop of Krakow

Once again the bishop’s letter was consigned to Angelo Battisti, with instructions from Vatican officials to immediately carry it to San Giovanni Rotondo. He departed at once, and upon reaching Our Lady of Grace Friary, the messenger approached Padre Pio in his cell. As before, Pio spoke the simple command: “Open it and read.” This time Battisti himself was extremely curious, and upon reading aloud “the truly extraordinary and incredible news” he turned to Padre Pio in order to congratulate him. But the friar was immersed in prayer.

“It seemed that he had not even heard my voice as I was reading the letter,” Battisti said later. The minutes passed by in silence, and finally the padre asked Angelo to keep these letters from Bishop Wojtyla, because someday they would become very important.

Returning to Rome, Battisti secured the letters in a safe place, and as the years passed, he almost forgot about them. Then, after 16 years, the evening of October 16, 1978 arrived. Gathered with the crowds in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, he waited for the announcement of the name of the new pope. When he heard the words “Karol Wojtyla,” Battisti was stunned. His first thoughts were of the words of Padre Pio from long ago — “Angelo, to this one it is not possible to say no!” — and then tears came to Battisti’s eyes.

Five years after her sudden cure in 1962, Wanda Poltawska had a rare opportunity to travel from communist-controlled Poland to Rome. By then information about Padre Pio had begun to reach her from various sources, and she had learned of the letters sent to him by Wojtyla. But as a medical doctor, she was still inclined to believe that she had been mistakenly diagnosed.

“It seemed too difficult to comprehend a supernatural intervention,” she said.

In May 1967, she journeyed from Rome to San Giovanni Rotondo and was able to secure a seat near the altar for Padre Pio’s 5 a.m. Mass. She could thus closely observe the Capuchin as he celebrated “…with incredible intensity and with an expression of suffering on his face.”

At the Mass, Poltawska could see the stigmatized friar’s own agony, the bloodstains from his wounds, the perspiration running from his forehead. Afterward, Poltawska waited in the sacristy to greet the holy padre. He passed by quite close to her, walking slowly on his pierced feet. Looking around, he stopped, and then gazed directly at her. He smiled as he neared her, patted her on the head, and said, “Adesso, va bene?” (Now, are you all right?). She was speechless.

The moment Padre Pio’s eyes met hers, she knew he recognized her, and now understood why she had not needed an operation several years earlier. It was not because of a wrong diagnosis, but because, “This monk had come into my life in such an extraordinary way because the Archbishop of Krakow had asked for it.” And Padre Pio had known at the time he received the urgent request from Karol Wojtyla that “this one” could not be refused.  CD

Frank M. Rega, a Secular Franciscan, is the author of Padre Pio and America (TAN Books).