Saint Pio dies before dawn in his cell above San Giovanni Rotondo

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 23, 1968 AD — Saint Pio of Pietrelcina died at half past two this morning in his cell in the friary of Our Lady of Grace, a mile and a half up the hillside from San Giovanni Rotondo. He was eighty-one, and he had carried the wounds of the Passion in his hands, feet and side for fifty years and three days.

The wounds brought people from all over the world to this mountain town of several thousand on the Gargano promontory. They climbed the last mile and a half to a small square church with no front to it, its door set off-centre in a bare wall and a bell above the roof the only sign of what the building was. On September 20, 1918 AD, Padre Leone, one of the friars of the house, heard a cry and ran to the choir. He found St. Pio lying unconscious behind the high altar, his habit bloodstained and his hands and feet bleeding. The wounds bled every day and night for the fifty years that followed. He never left the friary again. For years afterwards the little square in front of the church was almost always full by two in the morning, people waiting in the worst weather for the doors to open and a place near the altar for his Mass.

By this September he had almost no strength left. His health had been failing fast since 1966 AD, when he was given permission to say Mass sitting down. Through those years he went on celebrating Mass every day and hearing fifty confessions a day. Since March he had been in a wheelchair. By July he was almost never out of bed.

On Friday, fifty years to the day since the wounds opened, he celebrated Mass. Representatives of his prayer groups had come to San Giovanni Rotondo from Switzerland, Austria, England, America, India, Brazil and France for a convention to mark the anniversary. On Sunday he said Mass for the last time and gave his last public blessing.

Soon after midnight he called his superior to cell number 1, the room he had lived in since he came to the friary in 1916 AD. He made his confession. Then he renewed his vows, one after another: poverty, chastity, obedience. His last wishes were about the Blessed Virgin Mary. St. Pio said: “Love Our Lady and help others to love her. Always recite the Rosary.” In the last minutes he said the names of Jesus and Mary, over and over. He died at half past two in the morning.

His body was examined straight afterwards. The five wounds that had bled every day and night for fifty years were gone, with no mark left on the skin where they had been.

At four o’clock this morning the friars crossed the square on their way to church for Mass, and were told he was dead. Father Armand Dasseville, one of the Capuchins walking over, wrote that autumn: “We were stunned. We didn’t want to believe it. But the large number of police and soldiers stationed all over the piazza of the church and friary confirmed our fears.”

They waited in front of the church from half past four until half past six for the doors to open, and the doors stayed shut. They spent the time praying the Rosary.