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Preface

Padre Pio: The True Story was first published by Our Sunday Visitor in 1982 and was revised in 1991. Now, after Padre Pio’s beatification and canonization and the availability of a vast amount of information that was not available before, it seems clear that a new book is necessary, in which the life of this remarkable man is put into sharper perspective by the newly available materials, and certain errors in the original work can be corrected. The documents from the Vatican Archives from the 1920s and 1930s that were made accessible for study in recent years help to clarify the events in the life of Saint Pio at a time when he was bitterly attacked by certain Church officials and his ministry severely curtailed. Although the official report of Monsignor Carlo Maccari, who made a controversial and notorious investigation in 1960, is still kept secret, several Italian researchers have had access to his notes, which have been revealed in several books in their language, but, to my knowledge, never in English. The memoirs of Padre Eusebio Notte, who was Padre Pio’s assistant and confidant in the early 1960s, and those of Cleonice Morcaldi, a disciple who wrote down Pio’s answers to her questions in several notebooks, also help shed a clearer light on the life and work of the stigmatized priest, as do the testimonies and recollections of others that have been made available only in recent years.

My parents did not attend church during my formative years, but I was sent to catechetical class at a Catholic church near our home for a year, and then to Sunday school at a Presbyterian church, which my mother later joined and in which I was confirmed. Although I had no siblings, I had numerous aunts and uncles on my mother’s side, and they and their spouses were of many different religious persuasions, or none at all: Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, atheist, agnostic. I remember gazing into the black sky one night and wondering if there was anyone up there or whether the universe (as my father believed) was cold, dark, empty, indifferent. Sitting in my swing in the backyard, I would gaze at the eastern skies, trying to picture Christ, dressed in a red robe, returning, as the sister told us he would. One day my aunt, who was working on her Ph.D. at Catholic University (but was and remained a Presbyterian), announced that the pope had had a vision. This suggested to me that the other world, the world of God and the angels and heaven, was real and that Pope Pius XII was in contact with it and had a sort of “phone line” to God.

I first became aware of Padre Pio’s existence in the fall of 1966, when I was a sophomore at Bowdoin College. Returning to school from my home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, after a holiday, I was browsing the offerings in the bookstore of the North Terminal of what is now Reagan Airport when I saw a small paperback entitled The Priest Who Bears the Wounds of Christ. I began to read it on the plane. That is how I learned of Padre Pio.

I was fascinated by what I read about Padre Pio. He was still alive at the time, so I wrote to him. I think I mentioned that I wanted to enter the Christian ministry. I knew I did not want to be a Presbyterian, and a friend of mine at school was a devout Catholic and pressing me to convert to his faith. I think I told Padre Pio that I was then attending a Lutheran church and that I wanted to know which Christian persuasion was best. In March, I got a little envelope from Italy in which there was a typed, unsigned note reading: “Padre Pio sends you his blessing and will pray for your intentions. He urges you to have complete trust in the goodness of God, and to pray always according to His Divine Will. Father Superior.” That proved to be my only contact with Padre Pio, if the form letter could be considered contact at all. For many years, I believed the note to be lost, until I suddenly found it in 2000. I realized then that the handwriting on the envelope was that of Father Joseph Pius, an American Capuchin in San Giovanni Rotondo, who lived for three years with Padre Pio and whom I met several times. I would have liked to have asked him if he had actually brought my letter to the attention of Padre Pio, but, alas, Father Joseph Pius had gone to his reward just months before. Although it was clearly a form letter, the exhortation to “have complete trust in the goodness of God” addressed what was then and is now one of my greatest difficulties — but, of course, maybe it is for most others as well.

After learning of his existence, I wanted to go to Italy to see Padre Pio. My father, who identified himself as a “secular humanist,” wanted me to become a doctor or lawyer and considered my interest in religion unhealthy. Still, he promised to give me the money to go to Italy (or anywhere else in Europe) when I was graduated. However, Padre Pio died the next year (nine months before I was to graduate).

Eventually, I became a Lutheran, not a Catholic, and a pastor in what is now the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. I served as an “intern pastor” in Sugar Valley, Pennsylvania, from 1972 to 1973. It was then that I met Dorothy Gaudiose, who had made many trips to San Giovanni Rotondo to see Padre Pio, and, through Dorothy, Vera Calandra, the director of the Padre Pio Centre, then located in Norristown, Pennsylvania. In 1976, two years after I was graduated from Yale Divinity School, I published a biography of the American hymnwriter Fanny Crosby. Afterward, the editor asked if I was interested in doing another biography. I said that I was and proposed a book on Padre Pio. Although his publishing company was associated with the United Church of Christ, the editor was interested. His editorial board, however, was not. Then my friend Father John Schug, of happy memory, suggested that I submit my proposal to Our Sunday Visitor, which had recently published his own biography of Padre Pio — even though he knew that if my work were accepted, it would cut the sales of his own book! (And for this act of self-sacrificing generosity, I am eternally grateful to him.)

And that, in short, is how the first edition of my biography of Padre Pio came about.

That was more than three decades ago, and the study of Padre Pio’s life has become the work of a lifetime. Although I am not a Catholic, Padre Pio has influenced my spiritual life probably more than anyone else (with the possible exception of C. S. Lewis). It is my hope that, through an accurate and objective account of Padre Pio’s life, there will be some who see evidence that the idea of a loving God who has broken into time and space is worth intelligent consideration. For those who do not, it should nevertheless prove a fascinating story and food for reflection.

I think it important to avoid the role of the “hagiographer,” whose chief objective is to show how holy the subject was and to foster the image of Padre Pio as a fantastical “miracle man.” (There are some who insist that biographers “say only nice things” — not just about the subject, but about anyone.) It is important to reveal Padre Pio as a normal human being (although one who was exceptionally God-fearing and endowed with unusual gifts and abilities and attributes), who had hopes, fears, temptations, affections, peculiarities, and made mistakes, just like other people. My belief is that God is best served by revealing, to the best of one’s abilities, the truth. In doing so, it is necessary to recount, as fully and fairly as possible, the positions of Padre Pio’s detractors.

Although this work is published by a Catholic company, it is my hope that it may reach an audience of readers of all religious persuasions and none at all, because, whatever one ultimately thinks about him, Padre Pio’s life had an impact — and an overwhelmingly positive one — on millions of people, both during his lifetime and afterward.

C. Bernard Ruffin III

Reston, Virginia

February 2018