St. Pio refuses chloroform so no surgeon can see his side wound

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, October 5, 1925 AD — Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was operated on for a hernia today at the Capuchin friary of San Giovanni Rotondo, and he would not let the surgeon put him under chloroform. He lay awake on the table for about two hours. His reason was the wound in his side. He understood that the Vatican had ordered his superiors to let no one inspect it again, and he meant to stay awake, and in charge of what he did, until the operation was over.

St. Pio is 38, a Capuchin priest who has borne the stigmata since September 1918 AD: wounds in his hands, feet and side that bleed. In 1921 AD the Holy See sent Bishop Raffaele Rossi of Volterra to investigate him in secret. Bishop Rossi concluded that the wounds did not appear to have been inflicted from outside.

The surgeon, Dr. Giorgio Festa of Rome, had examined St. Pio’s wounds in October 1919 AD and again in July 1920 AD. Dr. Festa arrived at the friary on the evening of Monday, September 28. The next day he saw a friar whitewashing a room that had just been made by knocking two of the friars’ cells into one. Dr. Festa remarked that it would make a good operating room.

On Thursday, October 1, the two men were trading jokes in St. Pio’s cell when St. Pio broke off and asked to be examined. He told the doctor that for several years he had suffered attacks of pain deep in his intestines. The attacks were coming closer together, he said, and “especially when I ascend the altar steps, I must use extraordinary efforts to keep myself from fainting.”

Dr. Festa found a large hernia in the right groin. Part of the bowel had become stuck to the wall of the hernia, so it could not be pushed back into place. He proposed an operation. St. Pio took the news calmly and told him: “It is too bad that I did not think of having you examine me before. Perhaps I would have begged that you operate upon me.” That evening the superior of the friary agreed that the operation should be done as soon as possible.

The next morning Dr. Festa asked St. Pio to ask God whether Dr. Festa was the right surgeon or should hand the case to a more skilled colleague. St. Pio refused at once: “No, prayers with this purpose I will never direct to the Lord.” Then he told the doctor: “Put then into execution your plan, be at ease, for the Lord will not fail to bless your hands.”

That evening a guest at the friary, Giuseppe De Paoli of Balzano, left for Rome at Dr. Festa’s request to fetch the surgical instruments from the surgeon’s office, and he arrived back with them this morning. Dr. Festa had an operating table set up in the whitewashed room and had everything sterilised.

St. Pio spent the whole morning in the church. He heard the confessions of many visitors, sang a Requiem Mass for the friars of his community who had died, and gave Benediction. It was noon before he could leave the church. Dr. Festa and the others waiting for him watched him come towards them very slowly, pale from the morning’s work and from the pain of the hernia and the wounds. When he reached the surgeon, St. Pio said: “Dear doctor, here I am in your hands, but please I do not want to be chloroformed.”

Dr. Festa argued hard and gave his medical reasons for putting St. Pio under. St. Pio would not change his mind, and promised only that he would not move from whatever position he was put in. Then St. Pio asked him: “Would you know how to refrain, after you chloroformed me, from inspecting the side wound which you studied once before?” Dr. Festa answered honestly: “No, Padre, it would really be my first desire, to examine it again after all these years.” St. Pio replied: “Although I have received no instructions, I know that an order was given to my superiors by the Vatican, and it is my duty to see that it is respected. So, that is why even during the operation I intend to remain the master of my acts and my will.”

The operation took about two hours. St. Pio did not complain once. The surgeon saw two tears run down St. Pio’s cheeks only once, and heard him say: “Oh, Jesus, pardon me if I do not know how to suffer as I should!”

When it was over, St. Pio was taken back to his cell, where he collapsed from exhaustion and lay unconscious for some time. Dr. Festa later wrote of what he did while St. Pio lay there: “I confess that during this period I took advantage of his condition and explored the wound over his heart which I had made a report on five years earlier. I was able to observe the same characteristics that I had made note of then.”