Padre Pio for a new generation of young Catholics: A Review of "Wounds of Love" by Phillip Campbell

Like Jeanne d’Arc or Francesco di Bernardone, Francesco Forgione was one of those unique individuals gifted by God to the human race to assure us of His love, His understanding, and above all else, that He is not deaf to our sufferings and entreaties. But unlike these other great visionary saints, Forgione was not a streak of light which flashed across the firmament and returned quickly to heaven. Saint Joan’s mission lasted about two years before she was martyred at age 19.

Saint Francis of Assisi was 45 when he passed to eternity, roughly 20 years elapsing between his call and his death.

Click here for more info. Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, on the other hand, spent almost the entirety of his long life as a suffering servant of Jesus Christ. Afflicted with ill-health, physical infirmities, the Stigmata, and demonic attacks which left him battered and bruised, Padre Pio was also subjected to slanderous assaults on his character, all over a period of nearly seven decades. Yet during that time, he was able to touch the lives of thousands upon thousands of people, uniting his suffering to that of Christ and translating it into God's grace to heal sinners from all over the world. And his reach was truly immense. At his shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo, there is a wall of shelves filled with thousands of letters received by Padre Pio—in a single year. Nearly as many people recall unforgettable personal encounters with the gruff Capuchin saint of San Giovanni Rotondo, either in the flesh, or in the spirit. It is said that he heard about five million confessions over the course of his priesthood. And there are numerous miracle stories. One such story that I heard in person is that of Philadelphia native Frank Tenaglia (1965-2019) who credited Padre Pio with healing him of a grave childhood illness—a miracle which allowed him to praise God with his amazing voice for many years.

Though there are myriad books about Padre Pio's extraordinary life, very few of these are accessible to younger readers. This has now changed with the release of Wounds of Love: The Story of Saint Padre Pio by Phillip Campbell. I have been waiting for a book like this for years. It’s no easy task to condense the long and eventful life of someone like Padre Pio into the historical fiction format which appeals to young readers, but Phillip Campbell has done a masterful job. His focus on the early life of St. Pio is pitch-perfect. While most readers think of Padre Pio as a rather grumpy elderly man, Campbell’s presentation spends more time introducing readers to the young Francesco Forgione growing in grace and holiness in the bosom of a loving family.

Wounds of Love includes some of the most famous anecdotes associated with Padre Pio, including the well-known incident reported by General Nathan F. Twining of a Capuchin monk appearing in the sky to thwart Allied bombing runs on San Giovanni Rotondo during World War II. Campbell also relates a few more obscure ones, including one that I had never heard before, despite having read several books on Padre Pio in the past. In Chapter 12, the novel delves into the slanders aimed at Padre Pio by those within the Church in the early 1960s. In an effort to gather evidence against him, someone apparently wiretapped his confessional. Originally, I thought that this outrageous story belonged more to the “fiction” than to the “historical” side of the narrative. But upon further research, I discovered that this inconceivably awful tale was true—and that Padre Pio actually did discover the microphone himself and cut out the wire with a penknife!

In sum, Wounds of Love is a fantastic book and I heartily recommend it to readers of all ages. If you need additional proof of how the story draws you in, I gave it to my 17-year old son to read and he polished it off in about a week. What's more, he immediately moved on to a more in-depth biography of Padre Pio that we have on our bookshelves.

Padre Pio bore the stigmata, but one secret wound was more painful than the others

Gelsomino Del Guercio - published on 01/31/17

https://aleteia.org/2017/01/31/st-padre-pio-bore-the-stigmata-but-one-secret-wound-was-more-painful-than-the-others/

The saint only revealed it to one person — Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II

Padre Pio is one of the few saints who has suffered the wounds of Christ’s Passion in his body, the stigmata. In addition to the wounds of the nails and the spear, St. Pio was also given the laceration that Our Lord endured on his shoulder, a wound caused by carrying the cross, which we know about because Jesus revealed it to St. Bernard.

The wound that Padre Pio had was discovered by one of his friends and spiritual sons, Brother Modestino of Pietralcina.

This friar was from Pio’s native land and helped him with domestic services. The future saint told him one day that changing his undershirt was one of the most painful things he had to endure.

Brother Modestino didn’t understand why this would be, and presumed that Pio was referring to the pain that came from pulling the cloth away from the wound in his side.

He realized the truth after Padre Pio had died, when he was organizing the vestments of his spiritual father.

Modestino had been given the task of collecting all of Padre Pio’s belongings and sealing them. On the priest’s undershirt, he found a large stain on the right shoulder, close to the shoulder blade. The stain was some four inches across (somewhat similar to the stain on the Shroud of Turin). He realized that for Padre Pio to take off his shirt, peeling the cloth from this open wound would have caused tremendous pain.

“I immediately informed the father superior of what I’d found,” Brother Modestino recalled, and the superior asked him to make a brief report. He added: “Father Pellegrino Funicelli, who had also assisted Padre Pio for many years, told me that many times in assisting Father in changing the woolen undershirt that he used, he would always note — sometimes on the right shoulder, sometimes on the left — a circular hematoma.”

Wojtyla, his confidante

Padre Pio did not speak about this wound except to the future John Paul II. If the holy brother revealed it only to him, there must have been a reason.

Historian Francesco Castello writes of an encounter in San Giovanni Rotondo, in April of 1948, between Father Wojtyla and Padre Pio. It was then that Pio told the future pope about his “most painful wound.”

Brother Modestino later reported that Padre Pio, after his death, gave him a special understanding of this wound.

“One night, before I went to sleep, I made a petition to him in prayer. ‘Dear Father, if you really had that wound, give me a sign.’ And then I went to sleep. But at 1:05 in the morning, a sharp and sudden pain in my shoulder awakened me from a tranquil sleep. It was as if someone had taken a knife and stripped the flesh from my shoulder blade. If the pain would have continued a few minutes more, I think I would have died. In the midst of this, I heard a voice that said, ‘That is how I have suffered.’ An intense perfume surrounded me and filled my cell. I felt my heart overflowing with love for God. I felt a strange sensation: to have this unbearable pain taken away from me seemed even more difficult than enduring it. The body wanted to reject it but the soul, inexplicably, desired it. It was extremely painful and sweet at the same time. Finally I had understood!”

[Translated and adapted from Aleteia’s Spanish edition]

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