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Chapter Nine

Return to the Friary

“The Saint at Mecca”

Although Padre Benedetto continued to function as Padre Pio’s spiritual director and Padre Agostino continued to give him advice and counsel, both men increasingly came to look to their protégé for wisdom in their own difficulties. It is interesting to read through the letters the three priests sent to one another during this period. Padre Pio would agonize about his spiritual state and other problems. Padres Benedetto and Agostino would, in turn, give him counsel, chide him for not surrendering himself sufficiently to the “word of obedience,” and then pour out their own troubles to him, begging him for a word of comfort or direction. They would travel to Pietrelcina to consult him on matters concerning their Capuchin province. This was so often that, when learning that the two priests had gone once more to see Padre Pio, various other priests and brothers would grumble, “They went to consult the saint at Mecca.”¹

Padre Agostino, in particular, was forever asking questions that he expected Padre Pio to answer on the basis of supersensible wisdom. On May 13, 1914, for example, Padre Agostino asked Padre Pio about the upcoming elections in the province. Mentioning that he had spoken to Padre Benedetto about him, Padre Agostino suggested, “Perhaps the Lord will reveal the content of our conversation.”² When Padre Pio failed to mention the subject in his next letter, Padre Agostino again urged him to tell him what had happened during his conference with Padre Benedetto. This time Padre Pio responded that he had no idea. In August of the same year, Padre Agostino wrote on behalf of another priest who wanted Padre Pio to ask the Lord to reveal something about his future. Padre Pio replied that Jesus did not want the priest to know more than he already knew through natural means. Moreover, this time he warned Padre Agostino that he was going a bit too far and was coming close to putting the Lord to the test.

Despite the fact that Padre Pio was in the dark as to his own relationship with God, he was able to discern the divine will for certain people whom God evidently entrusted to him. Replying to a letter from Padre Agostino early in 1916, for example, Padre Pio commented on a soul about whom he was enlightened: “Jesus wants to test her some more, and for the moment he will not grant her request. Let this blessed soul have a little patience, because, in the end, he will satisfy her.”³ Padre Benedetto wrote to Padre Pio concerning a woman who had tragically backslid in her Christian life. He asked how this could have happened, and Padre Pio gave a detailed reply:

This is how that soul was snared in the devil’s net: When she saw that she was so favored by God … she was amazed at all the good that God sent her and she clearly discerned the difference between the goods of heaven and those of earth. At this point she was proceeding well.

But the Enemy, who is always alert, seeing such affection, convinced her that such great confidence and certainty could never diminish…. Furthermore, he put into her heart a clear vision of the heavenly prize, so that it seemed impossible for her to renounce so great a happiness for things so base and vile as earthly pleasures.

The devil used this immoderate confidence to make her lose that holy distrust in herself, a diffidence that must never leave the soul, no matter how privileged it is by God.

Meanwhile, having lost, little by little, this distrust of herself, she was cast severely into temptation, still persuaded that she had nothing to fear…. This then was the origin and cause of her final ruin. What remains for us to do? Let’s pray to the Lord that he might put her back on the right path.⁴

God enlightened Padre Pio about some people; but about many others, especially if he had never met them, he could say nothing. Padre Eusebio Notte, Padre Pio’s assistant in the 1960s, recalled how Padre Pio responded to a request for advice by his current father superior with a promise to pray. A few days later the superior asked again, only to have Padre Pio assure him, “I’m praying.” When the superior expressed his surprise that the man by then venerated as a prophet had no answer, Padre Pio told him, “My son, if the answer doesn’t come from above, what can I myself say? … If nobody up there says something, what answers can I give?”⁵ This was true throughout his ministry.

The Sisters Cerase

Padres Benedetto and Agostino were eager for Padre Pio to be a spiritual director to others, and they recommended several women to be his “spiritual daughters.” These included Margherita Tresca, from Barletta, and Annitta Rodote, from Foggia, both of whom eventually became nuns. By 1915, Padre Pio was also advising two sickly spinster sisters, Giovina and Raffaella Cerase of Foggia. They were considered “saintly,” and, although Giovina was fifty-three and Raffaella forty-six, the twenty-eight-year-old friar considered them “elderly.” The Cerases came from a wealthy family but were involved in an ongoing quarrel over their inheritance with their brother and his wife. Giovina suffered from what her sister described as “a sick stomach brought about by constant worry” and was emaciated and “worn out, physically and mentally,” from a life that had been “one long series of conflicts, contradictions, sighs, and tears.”⁶ Although she had “a heart of gold and great ideals,” she was irritable and “bored by everything and everyone,”⁷ constantly muttering, “A sad youth, a sadder old age.”⁸ Raffaella (or Raffaelina), the more cheerful and outgoing of the sisters — who, by her own admission, lived like “cloistered nuns” — was also nervous, frail, and constantly ill, complaining of her “forty-six years of useless, empty, and sinful life.”⁹ She admitted that she was “afraid of life,”¹⁰ wracked with “hellish interior martyrdoms,”¹¹ and “drowning in a sea of sorrows.”¹² She thought of herself as “a handful of filth,”¹³ “a mass of sin,”¹⁴ and “empty, wretched, and useless.”¹⁵

For the better part of two years, Padre Pio maintained an extensive correspondence with Raffaelina Cerase. Although he was almost two decades her junior, he did not hesitate to adopt a paternal tone in his letters to her, and she one of childlike submission. In his letters, the Capuchin stressed that Raffaelina’s temptations were “proof of the soul’s union” with God and that the storms that raged around her were proof of God’s presence and love:

The fact of being harassed, therefore, means that you are in the Lord’s service, and the more fully you become the friend and intimate of God, the more you will have to endure temptation. Temptation is a most convincing proof that God is united with a soul…. All the disheartening thoughts that are running around in your mind, such as the idea that God may be punishing you for Communions and Confessions badly made and for all the other devotional practices carelessly performed, believe me, are nothing but temptations which you must drive far from you, for it is by no means true that in all these things you have offended God, since Jesus, by his watchful grace, has guarded you very well against all such offenses.¹⁶

Padre Pio assured Raffaelina that God was with her and that a soul who is afraid of offending God is not far from him; rather, her fears and worries had their origins in Satan, whose attacks were permitted by a merciful heaven “because [God’s] mercy makes you dear to him and he wants to make you similar to his Only Begotten Son, who took upon himself all the iniquities of men and was subjected to terrible and unspeakable torture.”¹⁷ Therefore he urged Raffaelina to praise God, who was treating her as “one chosen to follow closely in the steps of Jesus up the hill of Calvary.”¹⁸

Padre Pio points out that suffering is a sign of God’s favor, and the Christian, instead of complaining of trials and temptations, should “follow the Divine Master up the steep slope of Calvary, loaded with our cross, and when it pleases him to place us on the cross by confining us to a bed of sickness, let us thank him and consider ourselves lucky to be honored in this way, aware that to be on the cross with Jesus is infinitely more perfect than merely contemplating [him] on the cross.”¹⁹

Likewise, Padre Pio stressed that joy is an integral part of the Christian life. He exhorted Raffaelina to “rejoice at all times, for the Lord’s yoke is an agreeable one. You are glorifying the Lord by your life and he is pleased with you. Never leave any room for sadness in your heart, for this would be in conflict with the Holy Spirit poured out into your soul.”²⁰ If she found herself oppressed by melancholy, she should think about Jesus, read a good book, then give herself “to some manual work or something which distracts … even … singing some cheerful song, and … [inviting] others to sing with you.”²¹ Moreover, she should keep her thoughts on heaven, and “the fact that here on earth we are on a battleground and that in paradise we shall receive the crown of victory; that this is a testing-ground and the prize will be awarded up above; that we are now in a land of exile, while our true homeland is heaven, to which we must continuously aspire.”²²

Padre Pio told Raffaelina that she was undergoing the “purgation of the senses,” characterized by the impossibility of fixing the “imagination on any truth whatsoever in order to meditate on it.” God permitted her to encounter difficulty concentrating in prayer so that he might “infuse” into her mind “a more perfect light, a much more spiritual and purer light” through which she could focus on God “without any words,” simply “contemplating him with a simple gaze, a pure, delightful, delicate, and divine gaze.”²³

After the “purgation of the senses,” Raffaelina could expect “a much more severe purification which is known as the purgation of the spirit,” which would lift her soul to an even higher degree of perfection. “The trial will most certainly be a very severe one, but do not be frightened. The Lord, as always, will be with you and will console you. This new purification will consist entirely in detaching you from what is called accidental spiritual devotion and love of God” — in other words, from a love of God that is based on his gifts rather than on him, for his own sake. This would happen through a “spiritual aridity” that consisted of “absolute privation of all comfort of a purely spiritual nature.” This was to enable her to love God for himself alone and not for any pleasure or enjoyment. In this state, Padre Pio warned Raffaelina that she could expect to be “enveloped in deep darkness,” with all spiritual activity “difficult and repugnant.”²⁴

“Did You Enter the Seraphic Order Only to Live and Stay Well?”

Even though pleased with Padre Pio’s work as a spiritual director, his superiors were not happy about his remaining away from the cloister for so long. In December 1913, Padre Benedetto, as minister provincial, began to insist once more that Padre Pio return to the friary. It had been two years since he had been forced to leave Venafro, and, at Pietrelcina, “breathing [his] native air,” his health had shown minimal improvement. “Return to community life, even though you are convinced that in doing so, you will grow worse,” Padre Benedetto insisted. “It seems to be contrary to God’s will … for you to stay outside the community so long for reasons of health. Did you enter the Seraphic Order to live and stay well and vow to remain in it only if you did not have to be ill and die?” He urged Padre Pio to accept an appointment as vice-master of novices at Morcone. This would involve very little work, just setting an example. “And if death comes, welcome it. It will mean that the fetters of the body will be broken all the sooner!” Padre Benedetto exhorted him.²⁵

Padre Pio balked, saying that he would be only an encumbrance to any community where he might be sent. Instead, he requested that Padre Benedetto seek permission from the Vatican for him to remain in the Capuchin order while continuing to reside in Pietrelcina. In doing this, perhaps he was seeking a compromise between the demands of Padre Benedetto, who wanted him to return to community life immediately, and those of his mother and Archpriest Pannullo, who wanted him to leave the Capuchin order to become a secular priest.

When both Padres Benedetto and Agostino asked Padre Pio to inquire of Jesus why the divine will was for him to remain outside the friary, Pio reported that Jesus said to tell them that they should not ask. This did not satisfy Padre Benedetto, who, in June 1914, ordered Padre Pio to report to Morcone. “Have fear of nothing,” wrote Padre Agostino, who was to accompany him there. “Everything will result in God’s glory and your good. If you die, I am sure you will go to enjoy the beauty of our Divine Bridegroom…. If he asked your life, wouldn’t you content him? Then, let the Lord’s will be done.”²⁶

Padre Pio obeyed his superiors and reported to Morcone, only to become so ill that he had to leave after five days. When he returned to Pietrelcina, he wrote Raffaelina, “I had hardly entered the town when they all came out to greet me, adding to their thanks to the Lord the cries, ‘Long life!’ and ‘Welcome back!’ I was moved to the point of tears.”²⁷ To Padre Benedetto, describing his terrible asthma attacks, Padre Pio begged, “Good Father, don’t be angry with me. I just don’t know which way to turn. I would like to have spared you this new pain, to shoulder the weight of this cross by myself, but this I was not allowed to do.”²⁸ Padre Benedetto was so enraged that he would not write to Padre Pio for six months. When Padre Pio once again sought dispensation from Rome to remain at Pietrelcina as a Capuchin, Padre Benedetto wrote Padre Agostino, “I will obtain the brief, but I will not believe in his sanctity anymore!”²⁹

Padre Agostino tried to explain the provincial’s position to Pio:

Like me, he is convinced that God is at work in your spirit, but he … does not believe that the Lord wants you there, out of the cloister … [Padre Benedetto asks:] “How could God, for the purpose of greater perfection, take a soul out of the cloister and place him forever in the secular world?” … [Padre Benedetto desires] that you might have the strength to come to the cloister to die, like every true son of St. Francis.”³⁰

Padre Agostino took it upon himself to plead Padre Pio’s case with the minister general of the Capuchin order, Venantius Dodo (1862–1926) of Lisle-en-Rigault. Venantius was sympathetic and agreed to obtain the “brief” from Rome that would give Padre Pio permission to remain in Pietrelcina while retaining his Capuchin habit for as long as he remained ill. Permission was granted in March 1915.

Although he had requested the brief, Padre Pio was nevertheless upset. He wrote Padre Agostino: “What humiliation for me, my father, at seeing myself practically cut off from the Seraphic Order!” Padre Agostino wrote back, comforting him, “The minister general has seen God’s will and grants you the brief, but only on a temporary basis. Therefore you belong to us and even more to the Seraphic Father [Saint Francis].”³¹

War

As early as May 1914, Padre Pio had been sought for supernatural illumination on the deteriorating international situation. In response to a question from Padre Benedetto, Padre Pio related that Jesus didn’t want him to disclose the ultimate outcome of the world situation, and urged: “Let’s pray with true faith to our heavenly Father for a favorable outcome, because the situation is getting rather grave, and, if God does not bring about a solution, the outcome will be very grim. We do not deserve divine assistance, since we have willingly banished the most lovable Jesus from our hearts…. However, may we at least be permitted to hope in God’s infinite Providence.”³²

On June 28, a Serbian terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and by early August most of the world’s major powers were at war, although Italy and the United States held back initially. Padre Pio saw the terrifying conflict as God’s punishment for man’s unbelief, and he feared that the wrath of God would soon break out upon his country, which, like its neighbors, had apostatized from God. He also was grieved deeply by the passing of Pope Pius X, who succumbed to a heart attack on August 20. Padre Pio characterized the pontiff as “a truly noble and holy soul whose equal has never been seen by Rome.”³³

On September 7, Padre Pio wrote Padre Agostino, begging him to pray to “disarm the hand of divine justice, rightly inflamed against the nations who do not want to know the law of love. Above all, let us pray to disarm God’s wrath towards our country. She, too, has many accounts to settle with God. May she at least learn from the misfortune of others, especially from her sister France, how harmful it is for a nation to distance itself from God.”

When Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies in the spring of 1915, Padre Pio said: “Italy did not want to listen to the voice of love.” Writing to Raffaelina Cerase, he lamented:

Up to the present, nothing has worked to make our country repent and come back to God. Alas, because of our nation’s sin, since it has become abominable and detestable in God’s sight, I fear that the Lord in his furious anger will punish us according to strict justice. May it please this God of goodness, who is rightly enraged with our country, to behave as a loving father and not as a righteous judge, as we deserve only too well. In the excess of his love for his creatures, may he change the punishment itself into a wholesome cleansing for all of us.”³⁴

Later he wrote Cerase:

The solemn moment through which our country is passing … does not mean that heaven has abandoned us. While heaven speaks, we are still loved. How wretched those countries are to whom the Lord doesn’t speak anymore, not even in quiet indignation, for this is a sign that he has cast them off, that they are abandoned and left alone in their blindness and obduracy. In you, wretched nations, there has been fulfilled what God said through the prophet Ezekiel: “My jealousy shall depart from you; I will be calm and will be no more angry.” Tremble, all nations who no longer hear even the angry voice of God, for this silence is the greater punishment which heaven has dealt out to you…. Let us be comforted, then, and trust in the Lord, for he still loves our own Italy … He is waiting for the voice of our repentance to silence his thundering. He is waiting for our tears to extinguish his lightning. Well then, let our tears of true contrition never fail us. Let us lift up our hands to heaven and implore tears of this kind for all our fellow-travelers.³⁵

Padre Pio wrote Padre Agostino, “The horrors of the war … keep me in a constant mortal agony. I would rather die than witness such slaughter!”³⁶ A few weeks later he complained, “The horrors of war are driving me nearly mad. My soul is plunged into extreme desolation. I had prepared myself for this, but it still has not prevented the terror and anguish that are gripping my soul!”³⁷

Padre Agostino wrote back: “My God, what a slaughter! What a bloodbath! What is going to happen to the world?”³⁸

Even so, Padre Pio had hopes that the war would prove to be a “health-giving purge” for the world, for Italy, and for the Church. He hoped that it would turn people back to God. It was his fervent prayer that, after passing through a night “shrouded in thickest darkness,” mankind would emerge into a “new day.” Just as Woodrow Wilson, who would take America into the “Great War” two years later, hoped that the result of the conflict would be a “world safe for democracy,” Padre Pio prayed for a world of reawakened faith, peace, love, and justice:

Ah, may all the nations afflicted by this war understand the mystery of the pacific wrath of the Lord! … If he turns their poisonous joys into bitterness, if he corrupts their pleasures, and if he scatters thorns along the paths of their riot, paths hitherto strewn with the roses of slaughter, the reason is that he loves them still. And this is the holy cruelty of the physician, who, in extreme cases of sickness, makes us take most bitter and most horrible medicines…. The greatest mercy of God is not to let those nations remain in peace with each other who are not in peace with God.”³⁹

Private Forgione

The clergy in Italy were not exempt from conscription, and by the end of May 1915 thirteen priests and eight seminarians from the Capuchin province of Sant’Angelo had been drafted. “My God, what a terrible situation!” Padre Agostino lamented, terrified at the prospect of conscription. He assured Padre Pio that, with his poor health, he would surely be rejected for military service. However, Padre Pio was not so sure, as it was common knowledge that the medical officer for the Benevento district (under whose jurisdiction he was) was notoriously unwilling to grant exemptions for physical disability.

In November, Padre Pio was drafted. However, the “ferocious medical captain” who examined him at Benevento diagnosed tuberculosis and sent him to Caserta for further examinations. There, to the dismay of the sickly priest, “the stupid colonel” pronounced him physically fit and roared, “Go to your regiment and meet your new superiors!”

Private Francesco Forgione was assigned to the Tenth Company of the Army Medical Corps in Naples, where some nine hundred priests and religious served in uniform.⁴⁰ Padre Pio was given janitorial duties. Almost immediately, he began to vomit everything he ate. His company commander ordered further examinations. He was removed from the barracks and lodged in a hotel in Naples — and required to pay for his bill out of pocket. Not having any money, he had to wire his father, who came at once with money and provisions. Finally, just before Christmas, he was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and given a year’s leave.

“Dead or Alive, You’re Staying Here at Foggia!”

Since Padre Pio had weathered several weeks in the army without dying, Padre Benedetto was determined to make him return to community life, especially now that so many friars were in the service that most of the convents were nearly empty. (Because the Capuchin order had only recently been reestablished, most of the friars were younger men.) On December 20, Padre Agostino wrote Padre Pio to inform him that Padre Benedetto wanted him back at the friary, telling him, “It’s being repeated all over the province that you are being deceived by the devil, who is taking advantage of your affection for your native soil.”⁴¹ On Christmas Eve, Padre Benedetto wrote, “Foggia awaits you.” Still Padre Pio balked. He accused Padre Agostino of being like one of Job’s comforters in insisting that it would be good for him to return to the cloister. He argued that since Padre Benedetto did not order him under obedience to return to community life, he did not have to go. Padre Agostino wrote back:

It is an unshakable principle in the economy of our salvation that obedience must prevail over all worldly reasoning. Well, authority has spoken clearly concerning your return to the cloister. Therefore, no other advice and no other person can make an exception. The authority can be mistaken, but obedience is never mistaken. God himself has never dispensed any saint from obedience to authority.⁴²

Ultimately, it was Raffaelina Cerase who was the direct cause of Padre Pio’s return to community life. The previous summer her sister Giovina had been hospitalized in a nearly skeletal state with a life-threatening liver disease. Raffaelina thereupon offered herself as a victim to God for her sister’s recovery. The next month she wrote to Padre Pio about “a fresh gift Jesus has given me” — a painful tumor rapidly developing in a breast.⁴³ Nevertheless she refused to see a physician for fear of exposing her naked body to the gaze of a male doctor.⁴⁴

“Do you mean to say that you don’t know that anyone who refuses human remedies exposes himself to the danger of offending the Lord?” Padre Pio wrote back. “And don’t you know that God tells us through the Sacred Scriptures to love the physician for love of himself?” He ordered her to seek immediate medical help, to pray for a cure, but to “be resigned all the time to do whatever God wants.”⁴⁵

The physician she consulted promised Raffaelina that a mastectomy would result in her being “perfectly cured,” but she wrote to Padre Pio that she had “no illusions.”⁴⁶ He wrote back that the cancer was “precisely God’s will,” proof that he “wants to bring you by this path to greater conformity to the divine prototype, Jesus Christ” — that is, to unite her with his suffering. He urged her to look to the future, when “Jesus will reward your faithfulness and resignation [in heaven].”⁴⁷

Three months after Raffaelina’s mastectomy, it was apparent that it had been unsuccessful and that her sickness was spreading throughout her body. However, Giovina was now perfectly well. The doctors could find no trace of her illness. Raffaelina confided to Padre Pio: “I asked Jesus for an exchange. Has he granted it to me?”⁴⁸ (Giovina wouldn’t die for another fifteen years, when she was seventy.) To Padre Agostino, who visited her at her home in Foggia, Raffaelina confided that she had also offered herself as a victim for Padre Pio’s return to the cloister.

Meanwhile, Padre Agostino was concerned by the attitude of the people in Pietrelcina — and in particular Padre Pio’s mother, who did not want him to leave. “You must understand that Padre Pio belongs to us,” he insisted to Giuseppa. “You’ve got to give him up.” She seemed mollified, but Pannullo was concerned about mob violence. In fact, someone had told Agostino, “If you run off with our little saint, we’ll cut your head off!” When he told Raffaelina about this, she told him: “Father, don’t be afraid. Make arrangements with Padre Benedetto. Padre Pio will come here [to Foggia]. He will hear my confession and he will assist me at my death. Make the superiors give Padre Pio the faculties to hear confessions. He will save many souls.”⁴⁹

Padre Agostino then pleaded with Padre Pio to come to Foggia, if only for a few days. “Don’t you want to console this poor soul? Do you want to let her leave the world with this disappointment? … Don’t you feel any obligation to this soul who has prayed so much, and, indeed, is still praying for you?”⁵⁰

On February 17, 1916, telling his parents and relatives and neighbors that he was going to Foggia for a few days to assist a dying woman, Padre Pio went to the railroad station at Benevento to meet Padre Agostino. The two set out to the city of Foggia, a train ride of about two hours to the northeast. The moment Padre Pio set foot in the friary of St. Anna in Foggia, Padre Benedetto, who was there to greet him, growled, “Here’s a pen and paper. Write your Mama and tell her to send your belongings, because, dead or alive, you’re staying here at Foggia!”⁵¹