Saint Pio found unconscious in the friary choir, bleeding from five wounds

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 20, 1918 AD — A cry went through the friary church above San Giovanni Rotondo this morning, and Padre Leone ran to the choir. He found Saint Pio of Pietrelcina lying on the floor, unconscious, bleeding from five deep wounds — in both hands, in both feet and in his side. They are the stigmata: the wounds of the crucified Christ, opened in the body of a living man.

Three days ago, on Wednesday the 17th, the Capuchins kept the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis founded their order, and he carried the same five wounds for the last two years of his life.

St. Pio is thirty-one, a Capuchin priest in a friary that stands a mile and a half above the town on the flank of Monte Gargano. He was sent here two years ago, in September 1916 AD, when there were seven friars in the house. He teaches in the seminary there and directs the students. This morning he said Mass and then stayed in the choir by himself to pray.

A violent trembling took hold of St. Pio in the choir, and then it stopped and a calm came over him. He will describe that calm as “a drowsiness similar to a sweet sleep”, in which “all the internal and external senses and even the very faculties of my soul were immersed in indescribable stillness”. Under oath three years from now, St. Pio will put what he saw next in one sentence: “I saw Our Lord in his crucified form.”

St. Pio had seen Our Lord once before, on the evening of August 5. The difference this time was that Our Lord’s hands, feet and side were dripping blood. St. Pio will write: “This sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable. I thought I should die and really should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart which was about to burst out of my chest.”

St. Pio will write: “The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands, feet and side were dripping blood.” He cried out. Padre Leone ran in and found St. Pio unconscious on the floor. His habit was soaked with blood. The wounds in his hands and feet were still bleeding.

The friars lifted him and carried him to his cell. He came round there, and the first thing he did was beg them to tell nobody. The wounds humiliate St. Pio. He does not want to be seen carrying them, and he does not want to be made to account for them. It is the one thing the other friars cannot promise him. A friar may say nothing about himself for as long as he likes, but when a superior orders him to speak he has to answer.

For a day or two he will bandage the wounds and pull the long sleeves of his habit down over his hands.

It will not hold. On the second or third day the Father Guardian of the friary, who has seen that something is wrong, will come to his cell and ask him outright what has happened. St. Pio will burst into tears and tell him everything. Word will go from the friary to the Capuchin provincial at Foggia, and from Foggia to Rome. The provincial will have the wounds photographed and send the photographs to the Vatican, so that Rome can say what is to be done.

A month from today, on October 22, his superiors will order St. Pio to write down what happened. He will do it in a letter to Padre Benedetto of San Marco in Lamis, his spiritual director. He will begin by protesting at having to write it: “What can I tell you regarding my crucifixion? My God! What embarrassment and humiliation I suffer by being obliged to explain what you have done to this wretched creature!”

In the same letter he will tell Padre Benedetto what he is asking of God. “Dear Father,” St. Pio will write, “I am dying of pain because of the wounds and the resulting embarrassment I feel deep in my soul. I am afraid I shall bleed to death if the Lord does not hear my heartfelt supplication to relieve me of this condition.” That prayer will not be granted. He will bleed from the five wounds, day and night, for the fifty years left to him.

In the weeks after, news of the wounds will get out of the friary. People will begin climbing the rough track up from the town, on foot and by mule, to see him, take his blessing and go to confession.

For another three years St. Pio will not say who gave him the wounds. In June 1921 AD the Holy See will send Bishop Raffaele Rossi of Volterra up that track as its apostolic visitor, to look into the case in secret. On June 15, with his hand on the Gospel, St. Pio will name for the first time who gave him the wounds. It was Our Lord, crucified, as St. Pio had seen him in the choir. St. Pio will swear that Our Lord was lamenting “the ingratitude of men, especially those consecrated to him and favored by him”. He will go on: “Then his suffering was apparent as was his desire to join souls to his Passion. He invited me to let his pains enter into me and to meditate on them and at the same time concern myself with the salvation of others. Following this, I felt full of compassion for the Lord’s pains and I asked him what I could do.”

Then came the answer. St. Pio will testify: “I heard this voice: ‘I will unite you with my Passion.’”