September 20 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 20, 1918 AD

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

The Capuchin priest, thirty-one, came round in his cell and begged the other friars to tell nobody — but a friar ordered to speak by his superior must answer.

A black-and-white photograph of a young, bearded Capuchin friar standing with arms crossed in front of a rocky, leafy backdrop; dark marks are visible on the backs of both wrists. — St. Pio of Pietrelcina, a young Capuchin priest, photographed at San Giovanni Rotondo on August 19, 1919 AD, with the marks of the stigmata visible on his wrists.

St. Pio of Pietrelcina, a thirty-one-year-old Capuchin priest, was found unconscious on the floor of the friary choir above San Giovanni Rotondo this morning. He was bleeding from five deep wounds, in both hands, both feet and his side — the stigmata, the wounds of the crucified Christ, opened in the body of a living man. The friars carried him to his cell, where he came round and begged them to tell no one.

4 min read

An old nun in the dark brown habit and black veil of the Discalced Carmelites sits back inside a covered mule carriage halted on a dusty road at a town gate, a younger nun and a friar standing beside the carriage and a bare-headed servant in black holding his hat; behind them a long stone bridge over a low river and a walled castle above the town in failing evening light. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Spanish Golden Age oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Retrato de Santa Teresa de Jesús (Fray Juan de la Miseria, 1576, Convento de las Teresas, Seville) View source artwork.

Teresa's last journey · Part 3 · ALBA DE TORMES, Castile, September 20, 1582 AD

St. Teresa arrives at Alba de Tormes too ill for the castle

Saint Teresa of Ávila reached Alba de Tormes at six o'clock on the evening of September 20, 1582 AD, after three days on the road from Medina with almost nothing to eat. She had been fetched to bring a blessing on the birth of the Duchess of Alba's grandchild, and a messenger stopped the carriage inside the town to say the child was already born. Too weak to be taken to the castle, she was sent instead to the convent she had founded here eleven years before, where the nuns laid her on the straw mattress their rule allows every nun, however ill.

3 min read

More in this edition

A small painted panel of a plain vaulted hall: churchmen in scarlet mantles and red caps stand and sit together at the centre and left, two apart by the wall, while a notary in brown writes on a sheet of parchment at a green-covered trestle table and a guard in mail stands at the open door. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Sienese egg tempera and gold leaf on gessoed poplar panel, from the paper's reference portrait based on St. Catherine before the Pope at Avignon (Giovanni di Paolo, c. 1460–1463, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) View source artwork.

column · FONDI, Campagna, September 20, 1378 AD

Cardinals declare the April election void and elect a second Pope

The cardinals who left Rome met today in the palace of the Count of Fondi and elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva in place of the man they had made Pope five months ago. They say their April votes were cast in fear of a Roman crowd and count for nothing, and by the Church's own law there is no court on earth that can rule on the claim. Saint Catherine of Siena has been writing letters on Pope Urban VI's side since the first news of the quarrel reached her.

4 min read

An ink-and-wash drawing of a stony mule track running up between dry-stone walls to a small whitewashed church with a bell over its door and a two-storey convent block beside it, with a hill town below and bare mountains behind; sheep graze by a wall and no person appears in it. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a brush-and-ink reportage drawing with grey wash.

event · SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 1918 AD

The army hunts a deserter and finds St. Pio in his friary

The Italian army spent months looking for a conscript named Francesco Forgione. He was eighteen hundred feet up Monte Gargano all the while, teaching in a Capuchin friary where everyone called him Padre Pio. The army discharged St. Pio for good on March 16 of this year, and he refused the pension it offered him.

3 min read

A painted panel of a bare stone room: a veiled woman in a coarse grey-brown habit holds an opened sheet of parchment with a round lead seal hanging from a cord, a sister leans in to read it with her, six more barefoot sisters stand in a row against the wall, an oil lamp burns on a bracket beneath a plain wooden cross, and a booted courier in a russet tunic waits in the doorway. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of an Umbrian panel painting in egg tempera on poplar over a burnished, tooled gold ground, from the paper's reference portrait based on Santa Chiara d'Assisi — single-figure detail of the fresco of St Clare and St Elizabeth of Hungary (Simone Martini, 1322-1326 AD, Cappella di San Martino, Lower Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi) View source artwork.

writings · PERUGIA, Umbria, September 17, 1228 AD

Pope bars anyone from forcing property on St. Clare's sisters

A letter from Pope Gregory IX, issued at Perugia this week, grants Saint Clare of Assisi and her sisters one thing: that no one may compel them to receive possessions. The sisters have owned nothing since 1212 AD, living on bread and oil that lay brothers collect for them, and in the spring the Pope came down to San Damiano to offer them property and was refused.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Saints Andrew Kim Taegon, priest, Paul Chong Ha-sang, and companions, martyrs (Memorial)

Saints Andrew Kim Taegon, priest, Paul Chong Ha-sang, and companions, martyrsMemorial

Saint of the day

Saints Andrew Kim Taegon

Saint Andrew Kim Taegon was the first Korean-born Catholic priest, ordained in 1845 AD and beheaded near Seoul the following year at the age of twenty-five. He is honoured with Saint Paul Chong Ha-sang and the other martyrs of Korea.

On this day in the Church

1378 The cardinals who had left Rome declared the election of Pope Urban VI invalid and elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva, who took the name Clement VII; St. Catherine of Siena spent the rest of her life arguing for Pope Urban VI.Our report Source
1582 St. Teresa of Avila reached Alba de Tormes at six in the evening, too worn out to go up to the castle, and was laid on the straw mattress her rule allowed every nun however ill.Our report Source
1918 St. Pio of Pietrelcina was found unconscious on the floor of the friary choir at San Giovanni Rotondo, bleeding from the five wounds of the stigmata.Our report Source
1968 Fifty years to the day after the wounds opened, St. Pio of Pietrelcina celebrated Mass before his prayer groups, gathered at San Giovanni Rotondo from seven countries; he had three days to live.Source

Quote of the day

“On Sept. 20, 1918, I was in the choir of the church after celebrating Mass, making the thanksgiving when I was suddenly overtaken by powerful trembling and then there came calm and I saw Our Lord in his crucified form.”

— St. Pio of Pietrelcina, sworn before the apostolic visitor, 15 June 1921, Sworn testimony of 15 June 1921 before Bishop Raffaele Rossi of Volterra, apostolic visitor