Their story
Francesco Forgione was born on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, southern Italy, into a farming family. To pay for his schooling his father emigrated to America to work. Francesco joined the Capuchin (a strict branch of the Franciscan friars, founded 1525) friars at fifteen and took the name Pio. Frequent illness kept him at home for years, and he was ordained in 1910.
On September 20, 1918, while praying before a crucifix at San Giovanni Rotondo, he received visible wounds in his hands, feet and side. They bled for fifty years. Doctors examined them and disagreed about the cause. From 1923 the Holy See (the pope and the Vatican's central offices) restricted his public ministry, and in 1931–33 he was barred from saying Mass in public. He obeyed without complaint. When the restrictions were lifted, crowds came. He often heard confessions for long hours each day and was known for blunt honesty with penitents.
In 1956 he opened a hospital, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (“House for the Relief of Suffering”). He died on September 23, 1968, and John Paul II, who as a young priest had made his confession to him in 1947, canonized (officially declared a saint by the pope) him in 2002. People follow him because he endured suspicion from his own Church for decades and answered with obedience, prayer and work for the sick.
