Beatification | the rite | the beatification of the venerable Pio of Pietrelcina
THE BEATIFICATION OF THE VENERABLE PIO OF PIETRELCINA
“At the foot of the cross of Jesus, souls are flooded with light and burn with love; here they grow wings to rise in the highest flights. For us too, may the cross always be the bed of rest, the school of perfection, our beloved inheritance”.
Written in his youth by the Venerable Servant of God Pio da Pietrelcina, these words may be taken to encapsulate his spiritual life and his highly productive apostleship. So great was his love of Jesus crucified that he followed Him faithfully on the way of the cross, shared in body and soul the suffering of His passion and worked day and night for the building of His Kingdom, being “all things to all men, that [he] might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9,22).
Son of Grazio Maria Forgione and Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio, he was born on May 25th 1887 at Pietrelcina, in the diocese and province of Benevento; the next day he was baptised in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli with the name Francesco. His childhood and adolescence were serene and peaceful. He received Confirmation at the age of 12. On January 22nd 1903, at 16 years of age, he donned the habit of the Franciscan order and was named Fra Pio. After his novitiate year he took his simple vows and on January 27th 1907 took his solemn vows “for the sole and single purpose”, as he wrote in the official document, “of pursuing the good of the soul and devoting myself entirely to serving God”.
Ordained as a priest on August 10th 1910, owing to poor health he stayed with his family until 1916. In September of that year he was sent to the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo, in the Archdiocese of Manfredonia-Vieste, where he spent the rest of his life, for the great edification of many of the faithful there. From 1918, they saw in him the marks of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and other charismatic signs. With his life given over to prayer and listening to his fellows, this humble Capuchin friar astonished the world. Countless people went to see him in the friary at San Giovanni Rotondo, and since his death the pilgrimage has continued. Meeting him directly or indirectly, an enormous number of people have rediscovered their faith. To those who turned to him he offered holiness, telling them, “It seems that Jesus has no concern other than sanctifying your soul”.
As a young man Padre Pio understood that, together with Jesus, he had to bridge the gap between God and mankind. This he did by means of three methods: spiritual guidance, sacramental confession and the celebration of Mass. His collected correspondence gives an idea of the stature of this expert spiritual guide, steadfastly living and helping others to live the fundamental truths of faith. Going to confession to Padre Pio was not a prospect to be taken lightly as he did not always reserve a tender welcome, yet his confessional was invariably packed. But the most stirring moments of his apostolic work were when he celebrated the Eucharist. The hundreds of thousands of people who have taken part in this sacrament found in it the culmination of his spirituality.
The intense ministry of this stigmatic priest attracted people from all over the world, who came to see him personally or wrote to him, unburdening themselves of their material and spiritual problems. Consumed by love for God and his fellows, Padre Pio lived to the full his vocation to assist in mankind’s redemption, making it the mission that shaped his whole life. The sharing of the Passion was an especially intense experience for him: the special gifts he was granted and their attendant interior and mystical suffering gave him a constant and intimate experience of the suffering endured by Our Lord, in the immutable awareness that Calvary is the hill of the Saints.
No less painful, and in human terms perhaps even more bitter, were the trials he had to undergo as a result – it can be said – of his Stigmata. In the history of sainthood it has sometimes come about that the elect has been misunderstood, by dint of special permission from God. In such cases, obedience becomes the crucible for his purification, a path of assimilation to Christ, an invigoration of authentic sainthood. On this subject Padre Pio wrote to one of his superiors, “I work only to obey you, having been told by Our Lord of the one thing that is most good in His sight and that is for me the only way to hope for health and to claim victory”. When the “storm” descended upon him, he made the injunction in St. Peter’s first epistle the rule for his life: to come to Christ, “living stone” (see I Pt. 2,4). He thus himself became living stone for the building of the spiritual house that is the church. Purified by pain, the love of this faithful disciple drew hearts to Christ and his demanding gospel of salvation.
At the same time, his charity poured itself like balsam on the weaknesses and suffering of his fellows. To his zeal for souls he thus added care for human suffering; he promoted the construction of a hospital in San Giovanni Rotondo. Opened on May 5th 1956, it was named by him as The Home for the Relief of Suffering. He wanted it to be a first-class hospital, but above all he was concerned that its medical practice should be based as much as possible charity, where patients were cordially welcomed and treated with warmth and consideration. He knew only too well that besides proper medical treatment, the sick and the suffering need above all a human and spiritual climate that enables them to rediscover themselves in the encounter with God’s love and the tenderness of the friars. He wished to show with the Home for the Relief of Suffering that God’s ordinary miracles pass through our charity.
In the spiritual field, he founded the Prayer Groups, which he defined as “nurseries of faith and wellsprings of love”. Our venerated predecessor Paul VI compared them to “a great river of people praying”.
Padre Pio passed away peacefully on September 23rd 1968. His body rests in the crypt of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie at San Giovanni Rotondo, and the mysterious fecundity of his long life as a priest and religious son of St. Francis of Assisi continues to make itself felt with visibly growing strength in every corner of the world. The Cause for Beatification and Canonization was began with the Process of Cognition at the Curia of the Archdiocese of Manfredonia-Vieste – it lasted from 1983 to 1990. Due process having been completed, on December 18th 1997 in Our presence a decree was promulgated in which We recognised that the Servant of God was heroic in his exercise of theological, cardinal and related virtues. Meanwhile, a Diocesan Inquest had been conducted on an allegedly miraculous recovery from illness in 1995, attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God. After a full examination of the case, on December 21st 1998 a Decree super miraculo was promulgated in Our presence. We decided that the rite of solemn beatification would be held in Rome on May 2nd 1999.
So today, during Holy Mass in St. Peter’s square in the Vatican City, We pronounced the following words:
Joannes Paulus II