Today, September 23, is the memorial of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio).
In 1887, Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione to farmers Grazio Mario Forgione and Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio Grazio, who was an avid devotee of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The family would in fact abstain from meat three days a week in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
He received the name Pio at age 15, when he entered the novitiate of the Capuchin friars in Morcone, Italy. He was ordained at age 22.
While praying before a cross, he received the stigmata on September 20, 1918, the first priest ever to be so blessed. Word about this matter spread like wildfire. Padre Pio himself became the center of pilgrimage for people from all walks of life.
Around this time, his extraordinary spiritual gifts became known: gifts of healing, bilocation, levitation, prophecy, miracles, extraordinary abstinence from both sleep and nourishment (a reliable eyewitness said Padre Pio subsisted only on communion wafers for at least 20 days), the ability to read hearts, the gift of tongues, the gift of conversions, and sweet-smelling wounds.
Padre Pio would hear confessions for hours in the stuffy confessional. He would, in fact, know if a penitent is not giving full disclosure of his/her sins as Padre Pio had the gift of reading consciences.
He founded the House for the Relief of Suffering in 1956, a hospital that serves 60,000 a year. He initiated and encouraged people to start prayer groups, some of which continue to exist to this very day.
Padre Pio died in 1968 at age 81. Pope Saint John Paul II beatified him in 1999 and then canonized him in 2002.