St. Pio hid his bleeding hands under his sleeves

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 20, 1918 AD — A cry went through the friary church above San Giovanni Rotondo this morning. A friar named Padre Leone ran to the choir. He found Saint Pio of Pietrelcina lying on the floor, unconscious. St. Pio was 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.

St. Pio is thirty-one. He is a Capuchin priest, and he teaches the students at the friary. The friary stands a mile and a half above the town, on the side of Monte Gargano. He was sent there two years ago, in September 1916 AD.

This morning he said Mass. Then he stayed in the choir by himself to pray. A violent trembling took hold of him, and then it stopped and a calm came over him. Then he saw Our Lord, crucified. St. Pio had seen Our Lord once before, on the evening of August 5. This time Our Lord’s hands, feet and side were dripping blood.

St. Pio will write: “The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands, feet and side were dripping blood.” He cried out, and that was the cry Padre Leone heard. 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 explain them.

So for a day or two he will bandage the wounds. He will pull the long sleeves of his habit down over his hands.

The secret he could not keep

A friar does not have to talk about himself if he does not want to. But when a superior orders him to speak, he has to answer. On the second or third day the Father Guardian of the friary will come to St. Pio’s cell. He has seen that something is wrong, and he will ask St. Pio outright what has happened. St. Pio will burst into tears and tell him everything.

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. They will come to see him, take his blessing and go to confession.

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. In that 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.