St Pio of Pietrelcina

More commonly and affectionately known as Padre Pio,we invoke this 20th century wonderworker to be our patron. He is admired for his prodigies of bilocation, prophecy, reading of souls, and miraculous medical cures. His most dramatic gift was the stigmata in which he was marked with the wounds of Our Crucified Lord. He suffered this for fifty years.

Steeped in the Franciscan spirituality of his Capuchin order, Saint Pio lived as a humble priest in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Not relying purely on medical miracles to help others, he founded Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza;House for the Relief of Suffering. Despite being God’s instrument for hundreds of miraculous medical cures, he founded this modern hospital.

We do well to remember his maxim “Pray, work and don’t worry.”