He was blessed by God in many wonderful and mysterious ways. The most dramatic was the stigmata and he bore these wounds of Christ for fifty years. Among his other gifts were perfume, bilocation, prophecy, conversion, reading of souls, and miraculous cures. People are still being cured through his intercession in ways that cannot be explained by medicine or science. St. Pio is a powerful intercessor.
While there are many figures well-suited to serve as patron saints of the pope’s jubilee, it was Pope Francis himself who asked the Franciscan Capuchins to bring the relics of St. Padre Pio and St. Leopold Mandic to St. Peter’s Basilica Rome from February 8 to 14, 2016 to mark the Holy Year of Mercy, particularly the Feb. 10 celebration of Ash Wednesday, a day in which the entire world was asked to become “missionaries of mercy.” St. Leopold (known to prophesy and to levitate) was a Croatian-born Capuchin friar who ministered in Padua, Italy, and died in 1942.
There is one precise reason why Pope Francis wanted the bodies of the two Capuchin padres at the Vatican for the jubilee. It’s because they were missionaries of mercy; and mercy as encountered in confession. They have truly spent the big part of their life in the confessional and had unleashed concrete expressions of mercy in charity and service. The choosing of these two friars as symbols of the Mercy of God in our world is a huge honor and boost for the Capuchin friars and a reminder to all of us that divine mercy is at the very heart of a Christian.
St. Padre Pio is a key example who has given his entire life in the service of God’s mercy – a model for the confessors of today. He did so full-time, practicing, at times in exhaustion, the apostolate of listening. The saint was able to become “a caress of the living Father, who heals the wounds of sin and refreshes the heart with peace”. He was never tired of welcoming and listening to the people who came to him. Pope Francis said “the saint spent his time and strength spreading the perfume of the forgiveness of the Lord. In this way his small drop became a great river of mercy, which irrigated many dry hearts and created an oasis of life in many parts of the world.”
On the basis of Scripture as well as of Christian tradition, no one can seriously deny that Padre Pio was—and is—one of history’s greatest exemplars of Christian humanity. It is the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, and the abandoned who have seen in Padre Pio an icon of mercy and compassion for their suffering, as well as a powerful intercessor for healing. Padre Pio, the most indefatigable Catholic confessor of the 20th century once said, “It is a tremendous responsibility to sit in the tribunal of the confessional. God runs after the most stubborn souls. They cost Him too much to abandon them.” One who comes to the confessional comes seeking comfort, pardon and peace in his soul.
We need more Padre Pios today: priests, confessors, even laypeople who just take the time to listen to another and say ‘maybe I can’t do much, but remember, I think about you and pray for you.’ May St. Padre Pio intercede for us to be merciful like the Father.’
