History: It was Padre Pio who asked Mary Pyle, a wealthy American benefactress, and very devoted spiritual child of his, to build a friary and a church dedicated expressly to the Holy Family. When she accepted and land was obtained from the lawyer Silvestri, a project of the friary was made by the engineer Todini from Vatican City. The initiation of the work filled the Pietrelcina people with great enthusiasm and was inaugurated with a long procession led by the religious and civil authorities and town band.The procession set off from the mother church to the ruins of the Purgatory Church, where everyone took a stone to carry to the construction site for the new friary. Towards evening many witnessed an extraordinary phenomenon. They saw, above the pile of stones, a large cross of light that seemed to rise to the heavens. It was visible for about half an hour and then slowly disappeared. On 13 June 1926, Cardinal Luigi Lavitrano blessed the first stone with a carved an image of the Archangel Michael defeating Satan. Every Sunday, the inhabitants of Pietrelcina, directed by the parish priest Don Salvatore Pannullo, carried the stones to the building site.
The completion of the friary took two years, but various difficulties prevented the friars from taking up residence at once. During the war years it was used by the allied troops for their barracks and they left it in pitiful conditions. It was not until April of 1947, after reparation work, that the first Capuchin friars finally came. The Superior was Fr. Luca of Vico del Gargano. To welcome the friars on behalf of the inhabitants was the Mayor Bonavita, the Parish Priest Don Albino Catalano and the President of Catholic Action. The following year the seminary was inaugurated. In the intervening time, the friary church dedicated to the Holy Family, designed by the engineer Milani, was completed and on 19 May 1951, consecrated by the Archbishop of Benevento Mgr. Agostino Mancinelli. On 6 September 1971, opposite the friary and surrounded by green and quiet, a monument was unveiled of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. This is one of the more pleasing monuments in bronze dedicated to the holy friar. Padre Pio is depicted with a fatherly and thoughtful expression conversing with three young friars who hand him a model of the friary seminary. Today, this Capuchin friary is a reference centre for piglrims who come to visit Padre Pio’s birthplace, and it has become, with the presence of his fellow friars, a symbolical perpetuation of Padre Pio in Pietrelcina.