Padre Pio receives the stigmata the first sign of his mystical union with Christ.
Padre Pio he was one of the most revered and loved saints by the Catholic Church in the 1887th century. Born in 1910 into a humble family in the Puglia region of southern Italy, Francesco Forgione, this is his baptismal name, spent his childhood and adolescence amidst poverty and the hardships of rural life. After deciding to become a Franciscan friar, he was ordained a priest in XNUMX and sent to various convents in Italy.
It was only in 1918 that Padre Pio received the first visible sign of his mystical union with Christ: le stigmata. According to what he himself recounted on various occasions, on the evening of 20 September of that year, while he was praying in the church of the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo, he felt a strong burning sensation in his hands, feet and side. Suddenly, she saw a man dressed in white and cloaked in red appear before him, who handed him a sword and then withdrew it, leaving in its place the wounds that Christ had borne on the cross.
Padre Pio educated by terror and emotion he rushed to his room to hide his wounds. But the news spread rapidly, especially among the friars of the convent, and the following day the phenomenon was already known to all. At first frightened and confused, he began to recognize in those stigmata a sign of divine grace, which had been granted to him in order to be able to participate more profoundly in the passion of Christ and to be able to pray more intensely for humanity.
Who first noticed the stigmata
The first woman to notice the stigmata was Philomena Ventrella because he saw in his hands the red marks similar to those we see in the statues of the heart of Jesus. The next day he realizes it Nino Campanile when in delivering the Mass offering, he saw it on the back of the friar's right hand.
After approx 8-10 days he also noticed Father Paolino of Casacalenda, when, entering Padre Pio's room, he saw him writing and noticed the sore on the back and palm of the right hand, then the one on the back of the left.
Il 17 October Padre Pio reveals it openly to FrFather Benedetto of San Marco in Lamis, in a letter where he explained carefully what had happened to him and how he felt about it.