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Chapter One

The Roots of a Saint

Pietrelcina

A little town of about four thousand souls, Pietrelcina — the birthplace of Padre Pio — lies some six miles northeast of the city of Benevento, the capital of the province of the same name. It is about forty miles northeast of the city of Naples in a region of southern Italy known as Campania. Over the years, the town, which grew up around an ancient castle, has been called Petrapolcina, Petrapolicina, Pretapucina, and, only since the eighteenth century, Pietra Elcina or Pietrelcina. Although most people think the word means “Little Rock” or “Little Oak,” no one seems to know for sure.

In 1860, the province of Benevento, until then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose prime minister, Camillo Benso, Count Cavour, created a united Kingdom of Italy the following year. A quarter-century later, Italy, a nation of twenty-eight million, was really two separate countries. While northern Italy (the area from Rome north to the Alps) was rapidly urbanizing and industrializing, the south, called the Mezzogiorno, remained socially, agriculturally, and economically depressed. In Pietrelcina, as in most parts of the south, the vast majority of the populace was illiterate and so isolated that many peasants still did not know that they were citizens of a united Italy.¹

The census returns of 1881 revealed that only forty-six of every one thousand inhabitants in southern Italy were sharecroppers, and only fifty-nine were peasant proprietors. Most of the people were landless, employed seasonally as farm laborers, who lived from hand to mouth. They subsisted largely on a diet of rice, bread, pasta, and cornmeal, with almost no meat, and they were generally so unhealthy that few of their young men were found fit for military service. Malaria, pellagra, and tuberculosis were widespread, child mortality was astronomical, and every few years cholera epidemics claimed thousands of lives.²

Although nearly everyone in southern Italy was Catholic, Christianity there was badly vitiated by superstition, comprising, for many people, a mixture of Christian and pagan elements. A popular prayer, whether to God, Mary, or the saints, was: “You give me something, and I’ll give you something in return.”³ Many approached God, Mary, and the saints only when they were in need, and sometimes blasphemed them when they failed to obtain what they wanted. One historian has characterized southern Italian men at the time as typically skeptical and anti-clerical, while their wives were wont to attend Mass daily, “rosaries in hand, fervently praying and supplicating priests, seeking out holy people who seemed closer to God.” They were often completely lacking in theological understanding and ignorant even of the words they prayed in Latin.

Pietrelcina was two miles from the nearest railroad station, its only communication with the outside world, as there were no roads, not even to Benevento. The social hierarchy of the town was similar to that of others of the Mezzogiorno. Except for a few artisans, nearly everyone was tied to the land and belonged to one of two classes: the possedenti, who were the landowners, and the braccianti, who were landless laborers. All were considered “peasants” except four or five wealthy families who lived on big estates near Benevento and owned much of the land worked by the braccianti.⁴ Most of the possedenti of Pietrelcina were the proprietors of very small farms, which they worked themselves with the help of hired braccianti during the busiest times of the year. While many braccianti lived in miserable dwellings in the country, most of the possedenti had houses in town and went out every day to work in their fields, remaining in the summer in cottages in the country.⁵

At Pietrelcina, the day was punctuated by the striking of the church bell, marking the various periods of prayer specified by local devotion. The year was highlighted by numerous saints’ days. Few towns in the region observed so many religious feasts as Pietrelcina. One writer noted, “The year was a veritable succession of feasts, novenas, High Masses, processions, with the inevitable accompaniment of fireworks [and] music.”⁶

Devotion to Mary was especially strong in Pietrelcina. Aside from Christmas and Easter, the chief feast of the year celebrated the town’s local patroness, La Madonna della Libera (Our Lady of Deliverance), in August. During her three-day festival, the faithful went to the church, offering the firstfruits of their harvest of grain. Some of those who were better off left candles with banknotes pinned to them. The bejeweled wooden statue of La Libera was carried through the streets, accompanied by the town band. Padre Pio later wrote, “The main street was splendidly illuminated and in the evening there was an artistic fireworks display. There were games, horse-racing, tight-rope walking, and theatrical performances.”⁷

The Pucinari hailed La Libera as their personal protectress. They were familiar with the account of how Our Lady delivered their ancestors from the wrath of the Byzantine Greek armies, who rampaged Italy in the seventh century. When the area escaped the wrath of these invaders, the bishop of Benevento, venerated as San Barbato (“The Holy Bearded Man”) taught his flock to pray to Mary under the title Our Lady of Deliverance. As late as 1854, La Libera was credited with rescuing the town from an epidemic of cholera that claimed 153 lives.⁸ Records indicate that after the town gathered to pray for La Libera’s intercession, many were healed, and new cases of sickness rapidly declined.⁹

The supernatural was near at hand for the Pucinari. Many people believed at the time that a special prayer or combination of prayers, if repeated in a certain way, would enable one to predict the day of his death. They spoke of a formula, supposedly in Aramaic, by which a person could commit himself to Satan in return for worldly gain. The “old people” of the town made prophecies and predictions about the future, even “predicting,” in the 1800s, the advent of automobiles, airplanes, and space travel.¹⁰

A native of Pietrelcina, who was a slightly younger contemporary of Padre Pio, described her town: “It was all farms in Pietrelcina. For us, Benevento was the big city. That’s all we knew. We dressed like people did in America. We didn’t have arranged marriages. We didn’t wear local costumes [except on special occasions], but all our clothing was handmade. We never closed our doors. We had no running water or plumbing.”¹¹ Another near contemporary of Padre Pio had a less rosy recollection of Pietrelcina at the turn of the twentieth century: “So uncivilized you couldn’t even leave your doors [unlocked] at night because everyone was robbing each other.”¹²

A God-Fearing Family

The paternal family of Padre Pio, the Forgiones, were possedenti — small landowners. According to local tradition, the family came originally from the Abruzzi, a region to the northeast. The earliest ancestor of record was Antonio Forgione, who died in Pietrelcina in 1837 at the age of about eighty. Little is known of him or his son Donato (1786–1841) except the vital statistics noted in the fragmentary records of the parish church. Donato had a son Michele, who was born in 1819 and died forty-eight years later, leaving behind his second wife, the young widow Felicita D’Andrea (1839–1887) and his two little children by her: seven-year-old Orazio Maria (Padre Pio’s father) and two-year-old Orsola.

Orazio was born October 22, 1860. He was baptized Grazio Maria, but, although his wife usually called him “Gra,” throughout his life he was almost always known as “Orazio” — the name that appeared on his death certificate and on his tombstone. He spent most of his childhood in the household of his stepfather, Celestino Orlando, who married his mother shortly after the death of his father, Michele.

Young Orazio spent his childhood in relative poverty, minding the family sheep. While still a teenager, Orazio was named a “Master of the Feast,” a member of the committee that planned the annual festivities in August. That was a great honor and a sign of the respect in which the devout young man was held among the townsfolk.

On June 8, 1881, Orazio, now twenty years old, donned the local costume — a doublet trimmed with gold buttons, knee-stockings adorned with white ribbons, and white shoes — and was escorted by his stepfather to the home of Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio, who was to be his bride. Giuseppa was dressed in a red satin gown, an azure-blue apron, and a red bodice covered with gold brocade. A white scarf adorned her head, and, to ensure fertility, around her neck she wore a cloth imprinted with the image of thirteen male saints. In her pocket she carried a pair of miniature scissors, which were said to ward off the “evil eye.” Orazio’s stepfather gave a perfunctory speech of advice to Giuseppa, and she kissed the hands of her future parents-in-law and left with her female companions, resplendent in red silk dresses nearly as lovely as her own. The little company went first to the town hall for the civil ceremony, and then to the church to celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony. During the ceremony, Giuseppa tucked the hem of her skirt between Orazio’s knees “to keep away evil things.” The nuptials concluded, and a band accompanied the couple back to the De Nunzio house, where they were to live.¹³ Thus Orazio Forgione and Giuseppa De Nunzio commenced forty-eight years of married life. (As was customary, the bride retained her family name.)

“Gra” and “Beppa,” as they called each other, were remarkable people. Orazio has been described as “a little runt of a man,” supple and wiry, with fair skin, dark eyes, and chestnut hair that remained full and thick to the end of his days. He exemplified what his granddaughter Pia Forgione called “the Forgione character.” “Whenever there was a difficulty, Grandfather, like my father and Uncle Pio, wouldn’t let it weigh on him. He would get through it. He’d sit down, discuss what was to be done, straighten it out, and go on.” Trusting the Lord to give him the wisdom to solve all his problems, he never worried and tried to instill this characteristic in his children.¹⁴ Adjectives frequently used with regard to Orazio Forgione are “simple” and “lovely.” A neighbor, questioned about his character, described him as “holy.” In a society in which men typically went to Mass only at Easter and possibly at Christmas, and at other times stood outside the church chatting with each other while their wives worshiped, Forgione not only went to Mass every Sunday, but, with his wife, stopped at the church to pray every day after working in the fields. He was constantly praying his rosary, a habit he instilled in his saintly son. Not an oath or a foul word ever escaped his lips, and so great a reverence for life did he have that even in the fields he would step out of the way of an ant rather than step on it. “Poor little creature, why should it die?” he would say.¹⁵ Orazio Forgione’s most characteristic trait, however, was joy. He loved to sing in a booming, resonant voice and was hailed as a wonderful storyteller. Seeing the hand of God all about him, he rejoiced in everything, radiating “a contagious joy about him which communicated itself to others.”¹⁶

Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio, the only child of Fortunato De Nunzio (c. 1821–1896) and Maria Giovanna Gagliardi (1831–1908), was a year and a half her husband’s senior, born March 28, 1859. She was evidently from a more socially prominent family than Orazio, and some of her relatives initially disapproved of her marriage to him. She had light blue eyes and was as tall as her husband. Even in her sixties, according to Mary Pyle, in whose home Giuseppa spent her last days, she had “a slim body like a teenager and very small feet.” Like her husband, she was extremely devout. As an act of mortification, she abstained from eating meat, not just on the obligatory Fridays, but also on Wednesdays and Saturdays. (That such was an option for her is indicative of the family’s comparatively high social standing, as most peasant families seldom had access to much meat.) Nearly everyone remarked about the grace and elegance of the woman sometimes called “The Little Princess,” who was always clad, from head to toe, in spotless white. She conversed in the local Neapolitan dialect — rather than in standard Italian — as most people of her age and class did, but Pyle, an aristocratic American, marveled how she “spoke her hard vernacular with marvelous grace.”¹⁷ Beppa prefaced all her plans with, “If God is willing.” Unlike many residents of small towns, she refused to gossip or criticize people behind their backs. Those who knew her were usually struck by her intelligence and sense of hospitality: “She was happier when she could give than when she could receive.”¹⁸

“Otto Bambini”

The Forgiones lived in a modest stone house at 27-28 Vico Storte Valle (Crooked Valley Lane) in the Castle District, the oldest part of Pietrelcina, which had grown up around the site of the old castle, which had long since fallen into ruins. The Forgione domicile seems originally to have been two small houses, since one had to exit the door of Number 27 to get to Number 28. Number 27 consisted of a single room with a single window. This was used as the parents’ bedroom. Number 28 consisted of a kitchen, where cooking was done at a large open hearth, and another, smaller room, which served as the girls’ bedroom. The Forgiones owned another dwelling a few doors away, a single room called “The Tower,” because it was accessed by steep treacherous steps and afforded a wonderful view of the rolling farmland beyond it. This served as the boys’ bedroom.

The home of the Forgiones was simply furnished with the bare necessities for health and comfort. The lime-painted walls were adorned with crucifixes and lithographs of the Madonna and various saints. After the children were born, visitors were amazed at the great number of books heaped onto a square table in the parents’ bedroom.¹⁹ Although neither parent could read, they wanted their children to have an education and provided for them accordingly.

A year after Orazio and Giuseppa were married, on June 25, 1882, a son, Michele, was born, named after Gra’s father. Two years later a second boy was born, who was given the name Francesco. Some say that he was named for Saint Francis, to whom Orazio had a great devotion. Others believe that, like most of the other children, he was named for a relative, in this case one of Orazio’s uncles. This child lived only twenty days. A third child, Amalia, also died in infancy. Then on May 25, 1887, at 5:30 p.m. according to the parish register, but at 10 p.m. according to the records of the town clerk, a fourth child came into the world and was given the name of his dead brother Francesco. This was the child who would later be known as Padre Pio.²⁰

According to family tradition, when he was baptized the next day at the parish church of Saint Anna by Padre Nicolantonio Orlando, his mother dedicated him to the Virgin Mary. It is not known whether she did this with the other children, but one might assume that she did.

Francesco II — called “Franci” (Frankie) — was followed on September 15, 1889, by a sister named for her grandmother Felicita D’Andrea, who had died two years before. The sixth child, born March 15,1892, was named for Orazio’s maternal grandmother, Pellegrina Cardone. A seventh child, born the day after Christmas in 1894, was named Grazia and called Graziella (Gracie). Most sources state that she was the youngest child.

There are some who insist that there was an eighth child, Mario, who was supposedly born March 24, 1899, and lived for eleven months. Padre Pio’s niece Pia (born in the 1920s) told the author that Mario did in fact exist. However, there are no civil or church records of his birth or death, and many doubt that there was a fourth brother, however short-lived. In later years, when Padre Pio performed weddings, he often wished the couple otto bambini — eight babies — and some assume that this was because he was one of eight siblings.

“The God-Is-Everything People”

When the church bell rang at daybreak, the Forgione family rose for morning prayers. Then Orazio saddled his donkey and started for the family plots in the area outside town known as the Piana Romana. During the summer, he would stop either at the parish church or at the town hall to hire several braccianti who congregated there, hoping to be hired for the day by one of the landowners. Beppa and the children would follow Orazio on foot, making the one-hour trek to the farm.

The Forgione farm was very small, by American standards — only five acres, according to some accounts, three by others. It yielded grapes, wheat, Indian corn, olives, figs, and plums. Orazio and Giuseppa also raised sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and occasionally kept a milk cow or two and some hogs. On a lane near their plot, they had a cottage with a dirt floor, which stood in a row of similar dwellings, owned by neighboring families. There they stored their equipment, kept their animals, and, in summer, cooked, ate, and slept. There were only two beds: one for the parents and one for some of the children. When the entire family stayed at the Piana Romana, some of the children had to stay next door with the Scocca family, who owned the adjoining farm and, like almost everybody else in Pietrelcina, were distant relatives. Around the cottage, Beppa kept a garden, where she grew roses, wallflowers, and carnations. When water was needed, she fetched it from a nearby well in a huge jug and balanced it on her head.

Padre Pio had pleasant memories of summers on the farm. He and his siblings played with the Scocca children, one of whom, Mercurio, shared with him the same year of birth and, later, of death. Summer evenings, when the work was done, Franci would go with his family and the Scoccas to visit neighbors on adjoining farms. There, in the moonlight, they would eat macaroni and sing. As an old man, Padre Pio spoke with deep affection of the green fields, dotted with leafy elms and cooled by fresh spring water, through which he and his siblings “roamed as little kings in a kingdom without confines, whose only law was that of the Good Creation.”²¹ With great nostalgia he spoke of the circle of friends with whom he and his family spent so many happy times, doubting if the world would ever again see the like of the stolid, happy, pious yeomen farmers around whom he spent his youth.

Winters, the children amused themselves playing in front of the parish church of St. Anna, sometimes called the Castle Church. Nights were enlivened by storytelling, both by their father and by their maternal grandmother, Giovanna Gagliardi.

Christ was at the center of the Forgione family, whom neighbors sometimes called the “God-Is-Everything Family.”²² The Forgiones were seen in church every day, and evenings they knelt together to pray the Rosary. The baby sister, Graziella, who became a nun, in later years recalled that in her childhood home, prayer came before anything else. Whatever evening chores or diversions were planned took place only after prayer. Most of the stories that the children were told came from Scripture. Although Orazio could not read, somehow he memorized much of Sacred Scripture and transmitted his knowledge to his children in the form of entertaining stories.

Of utmost importance to the Forgione family were the Madonna and the saints, who were seen almost as members of the family. They were so close at hand that it was unthinkable for the Forgiones not to try to enlist their help, just as they might enlist the help of their neighbors. They felt that they were not alone before the awesome throne of God. They gave homage and made supplication to God in company with the kindly array of helpers that the Lord himself sent as guides on their way to the celestial city. Foremost of these was, of course, the Madonna. The Forgiones could not imagine any Christian failing to love and honor the Blessed Virgin. It was doubtless from his childhood training that Padre Pio derived his love of the Madonna, whom he described as “more beautiful and more resplendent than the sun … a most pure crystal that can only reflect God.”²³