Sanctuary of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

Image: Giuseppe Tomaselli / Google Maps

On September 20, 1918, a thirty-one-year-old Capuchin friar knelt before a crucifix in the little church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and received wounds that would not close for fifty years. Padre Pio, born Francesco Forgione, had come to this remote town on the Gargano two years earlier, and he never left: for half a century pilgrims streamed to his hours-long Masses and waited months for his confessional, while he built the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, the great Home for the Relief of Suffering, insisting that prayer and science serve the sick together. He died on today's date in 1968, was canonized by John Paul II in 2002, and the tide of pilgrims only grew, so the Capuchins asked Renzo Piano for a new church, inaugurated in 2004, a vast shell of stone arches seating 6,500, paid for almost entirely by pilgrims' offerings. There the saint now rests beneath a golden mosaic, while in the old church the confessional, the cell, and the crucifix of the stigmata remain just as he left them.