Why padre pio become a saint

A few years later he had her join the Franciscan Third Order. Customarily, new members of the order had to choose a new name, and Padre Pio gave her the unusual name Jacoba. Francis, you will be present at my death. Giovanna remembered that strange prediction in September of , when she was visiting Padre Pio at Our Lady of Grace.

Later when she told one of the monks about it, she accurately described his cell, which she had never visited, and named those who had attended him in his final hour. As he did with Giovanna, Padre Pio always used his exceptional gifts to advance people in their relationship with God. His interventions in the lives of others produced remarkable and durable conversions. Unbelievers, atheists, agnostics, lapsed and lukewarm Catholics—he turned all to the Lord with a word of revelation or a healing.

Let the case of Alberto Del Fante stand for hundreds of others. Del Fante, a journalist, despised Padre Pio. He denounced him in magazines as a charlatan who preyed on gullible people. A few years later his beloved grandson, Enrico, was afflicted with kidney disease and tuberculosis, and physicians offered little hope for the boy's recovery.

They returned and told Del Fante of Padre Pio's assurance that the boy would recover. After Del Fante's conversion experience, he became a dedicated promoter of Padre Pio and his ministry. Padre Pio struggled all his life with irritability, a problem that long hours in the confessional and short hours of sleep intensified. But he redeemed this fault by putting it to good use. He employed his brusque demeanor to prod people to confront honestly the condition of their souls.

Once, he loudly chased a famous actress from his confessional. He refused to hear her confession because he had discerned that she had not faced up to her sinfulness. I never want to see him again.

In this way he used his famous gruffness as an evangelistic tool. While he opened our eyes to heavenly realities, he kept his feet firmly planted on the earth, enduring and enjoying ordinary things, as other human beings did. Today we mainly imagine him as a wonder-working stigmatic with miracles flowing from his wounded hands.

But the people who knew him, while they appreciated his marvels, loved him more for his earthiness, his compassion, his gentleness, his humor, and his common sense. Silly him to get caught with the goods in his pocket. Padre Pio embraced his own great suffering as his personal share in the suffering of Christ. Starting with only about beds and just enough equipment, the hospital is now known for its state-of-the-art facilities and services.

As a child, Padre Pio reportedly saw angels and spoke with holy entities, having visions of Jesus and Mary. Aside from stigmata manifestations, Padre Pio was also remembered for having performed bilocation, the ability to appear in two places at once.

He was also known for his miracles of healing, such as the restoration of sight of Giovanni Savino, whose right eye had been blown out due to a dynamite blast, and the healing of a year-old with severe back deformities due to typhoid fever in His incorrupt body is now displayed in San Giovanni Rotondo in Italy.

Alex Evangelista. Here are some interesting facts to know about the famous saint:. He began his religious calling at an early age. Padre Pio was born on May 25, in Pietrelcina , southern Italy. He was tutored privately until his entry to the novitiate of the Capuchin Friars at the age of Of feeble health but strong will, with the help of grace, he completed the required studies and was ordained a priest in Pio's followers said he bore the wounds of the crucified Christ.

Even before his canonisation, Padre Pio's former monastery at San Giovanni Rotondo had become a major site of pilgrimage for Catholics from around the world.

His shrine there receives eight million visitors a year. Pio's image is displayed in homes, shops, garages - even on the backs of trucks - in many parts of Italy. John Paul II was said to have a special affection for Padre Pio, and as a young man travelled to his monastery in southern Italy for confession.

The approval of Padre Pio's sainthood took place in record time, but during his lifetime many in the Church doubted claims of his miraculous cures and suggested he was a fraud. Pio was said to have known what penitents would confess to him. He reportedly wrestled with the devil in his cell. In granting him sainthood, the Church officially recognised two of his miracles: the curing of an year-old boy who was in a coma and the medically inexplicable recovery of a woman with lung disease.

This followed research from a health psychologist at Cardiff University that named 22 January as the single most depressing day of that year.