 | | | 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
