Padre Pio: Postcard From A Saint

Catholics recently celebrated the Feast of St. Padre Pio. Many of us have our stories of his intervention in our lives, but few alive today had those experiences while he was yet living. My mother and aunt did, however. Though they too have passed on, his presence in our lives began during their lives and affect my family to this day.

The most beautiful act of faith is the one made in darkness, in sacrifice, and with extreme effort (Padre Pio).

Think of a young woman, my mother, anxious about her sister missing in Europe during WWII, writing to a mysterious priest rumored to have the stigmata, read souls, and work miracles.

No one knew of this communication, including my dad but, when he was emptying out the family home in 1991 after her death, several of their children, including me, gathered to see the house where we had grown up and to gather mementos.

I have an interest in stamps, and I gladly took most of her old cards and letters. None of us noticed, except in passing, one postcard. Dated December 14, 1945, near the end of the World War, it was postmarked by a place in Italy named San Giovanni Rotondo.

I was far from the Church at the time and it meant little to me except for the history and as a family treasure. The simple message on the card was that “the Father” would pray for her intention and sent his blessing. The Superior had signed the postcard on behalf of the priest, and it was complete with four stamps from the fascist regime of Hitler’s closest ally, with the war yet raging during this unusual correspondence.

Interesting trivia for a philatelist. My mother had written to an unnamed priest and he was praying for her. That was all any of us knew at that point.

Detained by Nazis

My aunt of happy memory Anastasia, my late mother’s sister, was a Sister of St. Joseph during World War II. She had taken the name Sister St. Michael, patron of warriors against heaven and earth. Speaking of names, I recently wrote on this site of my recently passed older sister Anastasia, who was one of her several namesakes in our large Irish Catholic family. That will be worth a read too. But I digress.

Aunt Stasia went to France to minister, and while there, the Nazis began their brutal occupation of that nation.

Placed in the line of war’s unflinching flames, she became a prisoner in a concentration camp/hospital where they lived on nothing but beets for well over a year, among other brutalities. Her family did not know if she was dead or alive, and yet, miraculously, she returned mostly unharmed after the war ended. Though extremely thin, sooner than expected she began to bounce back in every way.

She had not taken her final vows and later left the convent life to marry and have eight children. Further, she was the last of her siblings and immediate family to survive. She was a daily Mass-going communicant until her home going, just two weeks after my return to Rome. Leaving the sisterhood did not mean leaving God behind.

She was delightful as well and adventurous to the end too. She might yet be with us had she not jumped up to dance an Irish jig during a live music performance at the long-term health care center where she lived! Sadly, she fell, hit her head, and passed on around two weeks later. That was in the fall of 2005.

A Blessed Burglary

Moving to 2007, I had been back in the Church for two years. My stamps were in a storage area in the building next to mine, and after thieves broke into it, I hastily moved the remaining belongings into my apartment, mostly in boxes under my bed. Thankfully, my stamps and cards were intact, and one night I was “randomly” digging in the stamp box, once again coming across that mysterious message from years earlier.

Now that I was again Catholic, the card struck me as a tad more intriguing than previously, and I decided to go online to learn where that strange postmark might be from. Was it a parish in Italy or a still standing monastery there? Was this priest still alive? I could perhaps yet write and thank him. Or so I thought.

What I discovered was this. While the priest had long left this earth, he was now a canonized saint by the name of St. Padre Pio.

As if that were not enough, I discovered all of this on December 14, 2007, the exact anniversary date of this card’s mailing.

I shared this amazing discovery with my family, and my dad of loving memory said immediately what I had begun to suspect—that the card was in reference to my mother’s prayer request to the living Padre Pio, asking for the safe return of her sister. He knew of no other reason why she had secretly, even from him, mailed it, and how just a few months later Stasia, although skin and bones literally, returned to the family as if from the dead (her name even means Resurrection) after several imprisoned years, and then lived the longest and healthiest life of any in my mother’s immediate family.

Did St. Padre Pio truly intervene in my aunt’s life? All I know is that she outlived her five siblings and was the only one who did not die of an illness. While not remaining a religious, she was nevertheless one of the most devout Catholics I had ever known and was always full of fun and cheerful. Had I not experienced a break-in I might never have known to this day that Padre Pio had written to my mother and that this card was in my possession those many years without me realizing it.

A Relic from the Information Superhighway

Later, I scanned the card and gave copies to family members and a few friends who wanted it. My dad, who had remarried after my mother’s death, took his copy, which remained on his bulletin board until the day he too left this life, and once placed it on his Lutheran wife’s shoulder when she was in severe pain, and then prayed. The pain left her at once.

God took a card written for a different purpose to his first wife and now used it to heal his second sacramental spouse, my stepmother Betty. It had been in my possession all of the years I was fighting Rome and living in a lifestyle that was a lie. St. Francis had assisted from heaven in bringing me back to the Church (another story elsewhere here) and all that time one of his most ardent followers, a Capuchin Franciscan friar who was now a saint, had been quietly present in my life with him in my journey homeward. I had no idea.

Coincidences? Not likely. Miracles? Very possibly. Whatever the explanation, it was God’s way of giving St. Padre Pio to our family. And to me, when I was later re-questioning my Faith after returning, he yet again came to help me in an unmistakable way.

We, that is me and my earthly family, certainly do not plan to give him up. But share him we gladly will. I authored another article a few years back on this series of events, and there are printable pictures of the card, and my aunt Anastasia, Sister St. Michael, found there. Copy them, pass them on, or whatever you wish. Padre Pio will not mind a bit.