A friar's wounds bled every day for fifty years

SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, September 23, 1968 AD — St. Pio of Pietrelcina died at half past two this morning. He was 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. He had carried the wounds of Christ’s Passion in his hands, in his feet and in his side for fifty years and three days.

A cry in the church

The wounds opened on September 20, 1918 AD. Padre Leone, one of the friars of the house, heard a cry that day and ran to find him. He found St. Pio lying unconscious behind the high altar. His robe was stained with blood, and his hands and feet were bleeding. The wounds bled every day and night for the fifty years that followed. St. Pio never left the friary again.

People came from all over the world to that mountain town of several thousand people. They climbed the last mile and a half to a small square church. Its door was set off-centre in a bare wall, and a bell above the roof was the only sign of what the building was.

For years afterwards the little square outside was almost always full by two in the morning. People waited there 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. Even through those years he went on saying 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 said Mass. People from his prayer groups had travelled to San Giovanni Rotondo for a meeting to mark the fifty years. They came from Switzerland, Austria, England, America, India, Brazil and France. On Sunday he said Mass for the last time and gave his last public blessing.

His last night

Soon after midnight he called his superior to cell number 1. It was the room he had lived in since he came to the friary in 1916 AD. He made his confession. Then he said his vows again: poverty, chastity, obedience. At the end 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.

At four o’clock this morning the friars crossed the square on their way to church for Mass. They learned that he was dead. Police and soldiers were standing all over the square in front of the church and the friary. The friars waited outside from half past four until half past six for the doors to open, and the doors stayed shut. They said the Rosary while they waited.

His body was checked straight after he died. The five wounds were gone. There was no mark left on the skin where they had been.