A Capuchin friar from the hills of southern Italy who bore the wounds of Christ in his own body for fifty years, heard confessions for up to sixteen hours a day, built a hospital out of other people's pain, and left one line of counsel the whole world now repeats: "Pray, hope, and don't worry." This page is his story told straight - what is documented, what is reported, what the Church investigated and finally vindicated - his prayers, his way, and how to make the pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo yourself.
Who: Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, born Francesco Forgione (1887-1968), Capuchin friar and priest of San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy.
Known for: the stigmata - the wounds of Christ - which he bore from 1918 until his death, the first priest in Church history documented to carry them; a confessional ministry that drew millions; the hospital he founded, Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza; and the worldwide Prayer Groups.
Status: canonized Saint on June 16, 2002, by Pope John Paul II, before one of the largest crowds Rome had ever seen. His feast day is September 23, the day he died.
His tomb: the crypt of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, San Giovanni Rotondo, where his body rests in a glass casket and millions of pilgrims come to pray each year.
Francesco Forgione was born on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, a farming village near Benevento in southern Italy, to peasant parents who could not have guessed what they had. He prayed before he could read, dedicated himself to God at five, and at fifteen - January 6, 1903 - walked into the Capuchin novitiate at Morcone and took the name Pio, in honor of Saint Pius V. He was ordained a priest on August 10, 1910.
His body was frail from the start: fevers, migraines, respiratory trouble so persistent that his superiors sent him home to his family more than once, sure he would not last. In 1916 they sent him to the mountain air of San Giovanni Rotondo, a poor town on the Gargano promontory in Puglia, hoping the climate would steady him. It became his home for the rest of his life. He almost never left again.
Word spread slowly, then all at once. By the 1920s the road up the Gargano carried a steady stream of the sick, the doubting, the grieving, and the curious - soldiers back from two wars, mothers with impossible cases, priests testing him and leaving converted. He rose before dawn, said a Mass that could stretch past two hours because he wept through it, then sat in the confessional for eight, twelve, sometimes sixteen hours. He slept a few hours a night. He ate almost nothing. This went on for five decades.
He died in his cell in the early hours of September 23, 1968, three days after the fiftieth anniversary of the stigmata had drawn tens of thousands to San Giovanni Rotondo, and hours after celebrating what would be his last Mass. His last words were the names "Gesù, Maria." When the friars prepared his body, they found the wounds he had carried for fifty years closed, with no scars.
On the morning of September 20, 1918, Padre Pio was praying after Mass before the crucifix in the friary's choir chapel when, as he wrote days later to his spiritual director, a mysterious figure appeared and from it came beams of light that pierced his hands, feet, and side. When it withdrew, he found himself bleeding from wounds in the places of Christ's five wounds. He was thirty-one.
He begged God to take the outward signs away and keep only the pain, and he hid the wounds under fingerless coverings for the rest of his life. But the facts were examined again and again. Physicians - Professor Amico Bignami in 1919, Dr. Giorgio Festa across several examinations, and Dr. Luigi Romanelli in 1920, among others - inspected the wounds at the Church's request and recorded what they saw: bleeding wounds through the hands and feet and in the side that, across fifty years, never healed and never became infected. No medical explanation ever settled the case.
This page reports that as it stands: the stigmata are among the most medically examined phenomena of their kind, they are documented, and the Church - after watching him for decades - canonized the man who bore them. Francis of Assisi bore the stigmata before him, but Padre Pio was the first priest in the Church's history to carry the wounds.
The Church did not take any of it on faith, and honesty requires saying so. The Holy Office investigated Padre Pio repeatedly. In 1923 he was forbidden to celebrate Mass in public or hear confessions; in 1931 the restrictions tightened, and for a stretch he could say Mass only privately, in an inner chapel, while crowds pressed at the doors. Doubts were raised about his honesty, his health, even his motives - and he bore them with the same patience he preached, obeying every order without protest.
The turn came in 1933, when Pope Pius XI had the restrictions lifted - he is remembered saying he had not been badly disposed toward Padre Pio but badly informed. Pope Paul VI went further in 1964, setting aside the suspicions and encouraging the friar to persevere. And on June 16, 2002, the Church that had watched him hardest closed the question: Pope John Paul II - who had knelt at his confessional as a young priest in 1947 - declared him a saint. The investigation lasted decades. The vindication was total.
The core of his day was the confessional, and the core of the confessional was something witnesses struggled to describe: he seemed to know. Penitents who came with rehearsed, partial confessions reported being stopped and told the sins they had omitted - not roughly, but with a surgeon's precision, and then with mercy. The lines stretched around the friary; the friars issued tickets. Millions of confessions passed through that wooden box across fifty years.
Around this documented center gathered the accounts this site presents as exactly that - reported accounts, devotional tradition, not formal decrees: people who said they smelled a perfume of flowers or incense announcing his presence; witnesses who reported him appearing far from San Giovanni Rotondo while friars testified he never left; doctors and patients at his hospital who attributed recoveries to his prayers. The Church pronounces on sainthood and on the miracles presented for it, not on every story told about a saint, and neither does this page. What is certain is simpler and stranger than any legend: a sickly friar sat still for fifty years, and the world came to him.
Padre Pio did not only console the sick - he built for them. In 1956, on the hillside below the friary, he opened Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza - the Home for the Relief of Suffering - a modern hospital he called his "earthly work," funded by the offerings of the same ordinary people who filled his confessional. It stands today as a major hospital and research institute, still run in his spirit: he insisted that in it, the suffering would find not only medicine but love.
And he organized prayer itself. The Padre Pio Prayer Groups began as circles of the faithful he asked to become "nurseries of faith" - meeting to pray, to sustain the Church, and to carry the suffering. They spread across the world and still gather by the thousands under the direction of his shrine. His way was never private mysticism; it ended in institutions that outlasted him.
Ask what Padre Pio did and the honest answer is: he prayed. Everything else - the stigmata, the confessional, the hospital - was fruit. Here is his prayer collection: the prayers of his own daily life first, then the prayers the Church now uses to ask his intercession. Each is labeled with where it comes from. And one honest note, the same he would have written: no prayer is a transaction and no formula forces God's hand - he himself called prayer "the key to God's heart," not a key to God's cupboard. Pray these as he did: faithfully, and leaving the answer to God.
His own prayers first; the prayers for his intercession at the end. Looking for a prayer by intention? The prayer library gathers them all.
He prayed it constantly - witnesses counted many full rosaries a day - and he called it "the weapon." His counsel was plain: "Love the Madonna and pray the Rosary, for her Rosary is the weapon against the evils of the world today." If you are new to it, our visual guide to the Rosary walks you bead by bead.
His documented counsel, witnessed across fifty years.
"Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen."
The prayer every Catholic child learns - and the one Padre Pio urged his spiritual children to repeat. "Invoke often this Guardian Angel, this benevolent Angel, and repeat the beautiful prayer: O Angel of God," he wrote to Raffaelina Cerase (Letters, vol. II). When people asked how to reach him with a message, his answer became famous: "Send me your guardian angel."
Traditional prayer, documented in his own letters.
"Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You.
Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often.
Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You, I am without fervor.
Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You, I am in darkness.
Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will.
Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You.
Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always be in Your company.
Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You.
Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I want it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of love.
Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes; death, judgment, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You.
It is getting late and death approaches, I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile!
Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers. I need You.
Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of the bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the Light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.
Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by communion, at least by grace and love.
Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You!
Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for, Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more.
With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity. Amen."
Attributed to Padre Pio and prayed by his spiritual children after Communion to this day - the attribution is devotional tradition, not a signed manuscript, and we say so.
I. "O my Jesus, you have said: 'Truly I say to you, ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.' Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of [insert your intention]." Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be to the Father... Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
II. "O my Jesus, you have said: 'Truly I say to you, if you ask any thing of the Father in my name, He will give it to you.' Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for the grace of [insert your intention]." Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be to the Father... Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
III. "O my Jesus, you have said: 'Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away.' Encouraged by your infallible words I now ask for the grace of [insert your intention]." Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be to the Father... Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
"O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender mother and ours."
Say the Hail, Holy Queen, and add: St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, pray for us.
Traditional novena from St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Padre Pio prayed it every day for all who asked for his prayers - devotional tradition calls it "efficacious," and the National Centre for Padre Pio invites the faithful to pray it daily in union with him.
"St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."
Padre Pio instructed his penitents to pray for the protection of St. Michael - fitting, for a friar whose whole life was watched over by the archangel's ancient shrine at Monte Sant'Angelo, crowning the Gargano above San Giovanni Rotondo.
Traditional prayer (Pope Leo XIII); his instruction recorded by the National Centre for Padre Pio.
"O God, You gave Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, Capuchin priest, the great privilege of participating in a unique way in the passion of Your Son, grant me through his intercession the grace of [insert your intention] which I ardently desire; and above all grant me the grace of living in conformity with the death of Jesus, to arrive at the glory of the resurrection." Glory be to the Father... (three times)
The official intercession prayer given to pilgrims by the National Centre for Padre Pio, composed after his canonization.
"Almighty ever-living God, who, by a singular grace, gave the Priest Saint Pio a share in the Cross of your Son and, by means of his ministry, renewed the wonders of your mercy, grant that through his intercession we may be united constantly to the sufferings of Christ, and so brought happily to the glory of the resurrection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen."
The collect of the Roman Missal for the Memorial of St. Pius of Pietrelcina - the Church's own words about him, prayed at Mass on his feast.
"Pray, hope, and don't worry." The whole of his direction in one line, repeated in his letters and to everyone who asked. In fuller form: pray, hope, and don't worry - worry is useless; God is merciful and will hear your prayer.
"Prayer is the best weapon we have; it is the key to God's heart." From his letters of spiritual direction. Notice the order: first prayer, then everything else. He told the anxious to stop managing outcomes and start keeping company with God.
Keep the eyes on Jesus. His direction for the scrupulous and the despairing was never analysis - it was a look. When his spiritual children wrote to him crushed by their own faults, his answer returned again and again to the same move: stop staring at yourself, and look at him.
Following his way, concretely, is what he asked of everyone: daily prayer you actually keep, confession you actually make, the Rosary in your pocket, and your duty done without drama. The daily practice pages of this site are built on the same skeleton.
Padre Pio died in 1968 - late enough that real film of him exists. These videos are hosted on YouTube by their channels and were not produced by this site; each uses youtube-nocookie.com (no YouTube cookies unless you press play) and was verified playable before embedding.
Rare period footage - Padre Pio at the altar, in the friary corridors, among the crowds on the Gargano (about 10 minutes). Watch on YouTube.
His final Mass, September 1968 - the last film of him at the altar, days before his death (about 5 minutes). Watch on YouTube.
Saint Padre Pio: Amazing Stories - EWTN's Living Divine Mercy documentary on his life and the accounts around him (about 27 minutes). Watch on YouTube.
Everything is in one small town on the Gargano promontory in Puglia - he barely left it for fifty years, so the pilgrimage is unusually concentrated. Plan around four stops:
Santa Maria delle Grazie. The old convent church where he lived, celebrated Mass, and heard confessions from 1918 to his death. In the choir chapel is the crucifix before which he received the stigmata; his cell - Cell 5 - is preserved as he left it; his confessional still stands. Arrive early: the church fills before the first Masses.
His tomb. His body rests in a glass casket in the crypt of Santa Maria delle Grazie, brought up and displayed in 2008 - forty years after his death - and venerated there since. In February 2016 the shrine made one famous exception, when his body was carried to Saint Peter's in Rome for the Year of Mercy. Pilgrims file past the casket in silence all day; the queue moves steadily.
The Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church. The great modern church beside the old one, designed by Renzo Piano and consecrated in 2004 because the old church could no longer hold the crowds - it seats thousands under a vast stone roof that echoes the Gargano's arches.
Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza. The hospital on the hillside below - his "earthly work" - still operating, still his. Pilgrims visit its chapel and the view over the plain his prayers watched for fifty years.
Getting there. San Giovanni Rotondo sits inland on the Gargano, in the province of Foggia. The practical gateway is Foggia - on the main rail line from Rome and Bari - with buses from Foggia up to the town; many pilgrims also come by organized coach from Rome. Check current Mass, confession, and cell-visit times on the official shrine site, padrepio.it, before you travel - schedules change with the seasons and the calendar. The year's peak is September 23, his feast; the anniversary of the stigmata, September 20, draws its own crowds. Go modestly dressed, expect queues with grace - he made people wait too - and leave time to simply sit in the old church. That stillness is the point of the place.
Yes. Pope John Paul II canonized him on June 16, 2002, in Saint Peter's Square - declared a saint of the universal Church, not merely beatified. His feast is September 23.
What is documented: from September 20, 1918 until his death in 1968, he carried bleeding wounds in his hands, feet, and side; physicians examining them at the Church's request recorded wounds that never healed and never infected over fifty years; at his death the wounds were gone, leaving no scars. The Church investigated him for decades, restricted him, and finally canonized him. This page presents the documented record and does not argue you into a conclusion.
For beatification, the Church recognized the healing of Consiglia De Martino; for canonization, the healing of a seven-year-old boy, Matteo Pio Colella, from a coma after doctors at Padre Pio's own hospital had given him up. Both were examined under the Church's full medical and theological process.
Circles of prayer he asked his spiritual children to found - "nurseries of faith" - to sustain the Church and carry the suffering. They continue worldwide under the direction of the shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo.
His body lies in a glass casket in the crypt of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, where pilgrims venerate him daily.
Yes. In 1947 a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyła traveled to San Giovanni Rotondo and confessed to him. Stories told afterward say Padre Pio saw the young priest's future; what is documented is the meeting itself - and that fifty-five years later, as pope, Wojtyła declared his old confessor a saint.