A hundred thousand follow St. Pio's open coffin through San Giovanni Rotondo

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 26, 1968 AD — More than a hundred thousand people came to San Giovanni Rotondo on Thursday to bury Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. His open coffin rode in an open hearse down the hill from his friary to the town, and the procession took more than three hours to wind through the narrow streets and back. He was buried that day in the crypt of the church of Our Lady of Grace.

St. Pio, the Capuchin friar, died on Monday at the friary of Our Lady of Grace, aged 81. He had lived there, above the town on the flank of Monte Gargano, since September 4, 1916 AD. After a few early absences, military service among them, he never left the friary again, not even for a day. For fifty of those years he bore the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ’s crucifixion in his hands, his feet and his side, and they bled day and night.

Father Armand Dasseville, a Capuchin staying at the friary that week, heard of the death with the other friars at four on Monday morning, as they walked to the church to say Mass. Police and soldiers stood all over the piazza, and the church doors stayed shut. The friars waited outside from half past four until half past six, praying the Rosary.

Later that day the doors opened to the public. St. Pio lay in an open coffin just outside the sanctuary, below the Communion rail. Busloads of people filed past him day and night until Thursday, rich and poor, crippled and healthy, Italians and foreigners. Father Dasseville wrote that pilgrims came from all over the world “to pay their last respects and to unite in sorrow over the loss of their common father, Padre Pio.”

Thursday was sunny. By three in the afternoon the piazza in front of the church and the one in front of the hospital he had founded nearby were full. Most of the crowd were Italians, but many had come from abroad.

The cortege left the church and went slowly down the road to the town, a mile and a half, with St. Pio in full view of everyone. Father Clementine of Vlissingen, the Minister General, who governs the whole Capuchin order, presided and walked in front of the hearse. The friars who had lived with St. Pio walked around the coffin as its guard of honour. Members of other religious orders walked in the procession, and so did priests who belonged to no order. Thousands of people lined both sides of the road, and others leaned from windows or climbed onto porches and rooftops to see him pass.

Along the route the people of San Giovanni Rotondo had hung their best bedspread or their best tablecloth from the windowsill, now and then a Persian carpet, with a framed picture of St. Pio at the centre, bordered in black cloth. Everyone was wearing their Sunday clothes. Flowers were thrown from many windows, and at times from a helicopter that followed the procession the whole way.

The people in the procession prayed the Rosary and the Litany of Our Lady over and over as they walked. Father Dasseville, who walked with them, wrote down what he heard and saw: “Amazingly enough, there was no hysteria. Only a few cries or outbursts from some women of San Giovanni Rotondo, who had known and loved Padre Pio for so many years, broke the silence of the procession. I saw men and women, priests and religious, unashamedly and in public, wipe away tears.”

On the road Father Dasseville thought of Saint Francis of Assisi, who also bore the stigmata. In 1226 AD the friars carried the body of St. Francis a mile and a half from the chapel of the Portiuncula to Assisi. Father Dasseville wrote: “Neither Assisi nor San Giovanni Rotondo was a town rich in material things, but both were honored with a stigmatist, a holy man of God.”

After more than three hours the procession came back to the piazza in front of the church, and the funeral Mass was said there in the open air. Father Clementine and twenty-six other friars concelebrated it, and a eulogy was preached. Then St. Pio was buried in the crypt of the church of Our Lady of Grace, beside the friary where he had lived for fifty-two years.