Beard of the Week LXXIV: A Pious Father
This week's pious beard belongs to St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. He was given the name Francesco at his baptism the day after his birth on 25 May 1887. Continuing with his official Vatican biography
On 6 January 1903, at the age of sixteen, he entered the novitiate of the Capuchin Friars at Morcone, where on 22 January he took the Franciscan habit and the name Brother Pio. At the end of his novitiate year he took simple vows, and on 27 January 1907 made his solemn profession.
After he was ordained priest on 10 August 1910 at Benevento, he stayed at home with his family until 1916 for health reasons. In September of that year he was sent to the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo and remained there until his death.
He died on 23 September 1968 at the age of eighty-one.
Pio had a devoted following at the time of his death, a following that has only grown since he died. Apart from his saintly desire to live a simple life of servitude, he was notes and admired as a stigmatist, i.e., one who exhibits the stigmata of Jesus. In the words of the [US] National Centre for Padre Pio
On September 20, 1918 the five wounds of our Lord's passion appeared on his body, making him the first stigmatized priest on the history of the Catholic Church.
This is undoubtedly why images of Pio frequently show him standing in an orant posture (hands raised and apart), exhibiting the bloody bandages wrapping his hands.
Padre Pio was canonized by John Paul II on 16 June 2002 in a liturgy that broke attendance records at the Vatican.
Padre Pio became almost too familiar a face to us from our first visit to Rome in October 2001. Already then religious fervor was on the rise in anticipation of the canonization that was only a few months away (beatification was on 2 May, 1999), and images of Padre Pio were everywhere we looked.
Unfortunately, there weren't very many different images to choose from; the one we have here is one of maybe three that were very, very popular. On later trips we discovered that large statues were becoming popular in the trendier churches. I'm afraid we found the somewhat dour face of Pio became a little easy to make fun of after the first hundred or so little or big shines to him that one trips over.
I've seen that I'm not the only one. You might enjoy looking through the lovely items in the "Padre Pio Gift Shop Online" (from the Padre Pio Foundation of America). And I would be remiss if I did not draw your attention to this lovely Padre Pio Watch (from this page). Ah well. Although his popular images don't show it and his followers would probably be horrified, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Pio developed quite a sense of humor about it all in his eternal afterlife.
As I write I am sitting in front of my own 6-inch statuette, painted in not terribly life-like colors, of Padre Pio, a souvenir of a more recent trip to Rome. In his upraised stigmatic hand he holds a nice multi-color rosary made of small, wooden beads. I also have a beautiful 8-by-10-inch 3-D picture showing two of the more famous Pio images, the one above being one of them. I'd thought someday to assemble my own little shrine as a memento of our visits to Rome.
But let's end with something nice and less silly. On this page is a beautiful icon of Pio, painted by Terrance Nelson, along with an appreciation of Pio's life and sainthood.