Watch where you walk!
A man went to San Giovanni Rotondo to meet Padre Po but there were such a large number of people that he had to turn back without even being able to see him. As he walked away from the convent he felt the wonderful perfume emanating from the father’s stigmata and felt comforted.
A few months later, while walking through a mountainous area, he felt the same perfume again. He stood up and was ecstatic for a few moments inhaling the exquisite smell. When he came to, he realized that he was on the edge of a precipice and that if it hadn’t been for his father’s perfume he would have kept walking… He decided to go immediately to San Giovanni Rotondo to thank Padre Po. When he arrived at the convent, Father Po, who had never seen him, shouted at him smiling:- “My son! Watch where you walk!”
under the mattress
A lady suffered from such terrible headaches that she decided to put a picture of Padre Po under her pillow in the hope that the pain would go away. After several weeks her headache persisted and then her Italian temperament made her exclaim out of herself: – “Well look Father Po, since you didn’t want to get rid of my migraine I’ll put you under the mattress as punishment”. Said and done. She angrily put the father’s photograph under her mattress.
A few months later he went to San Giovanni Rotondo to confess to his father. She barely knelt in front of the confessional, the father stared at her and closed the little door of the confessional with a sovereign blow. The lady was petrified because she did not expect such a reaction and she could not articulate a word. A few minutes later the small door of the confessional opened again and the father said to him with a smile: “You didn’t like me, did you? Well, I didn’t like that you put me under the mattress either!
Father Po’s advice
An Argentine priest had heard so much about Father Po’s advice that he decided to travel from his country to Italy with the sole purpose of getting the priest to give him some useful recommendation for his spiritual life. He arrived in Italy, confessed to his father and had to return without his father giving him any advice. The father gave him absolution, blessed him and that was all. He arrived in Argentina so disillusioned that he relieved himself by telling the whole world about the episode. “I don’t understand why the father didn’t tell me anything,” he said, “and I traveled from Argentina just for that!” “-Father Po read the consciences and knew that I had gone hoping that he would give me some recommendation”, etc, etc. So he complained over and over again until his faithful began to ask him: “Father, are you sure Father Po didn’t tell you anything? Didn’t he make a gesture, something out of the ordinary??” Then the priest began to think and finally remembered that Father Po had done something a little strange. “-He gave me the final blessing making the sign of the cross extremely slowly, so slowly that I thought: is it never going to end?”, I told the faithful of him. “Here’s the advice!” They told him, “you do it so quickly when you bless us that it looks more like a doodle than a cross.” The priest was very happy with this original way of advising that Father Po had.
The watchman and the thieves
“Some thieves were prowling in my neighborhood, in Rome, and this prevented me from going to visit Father Po. In the end I decided after having made a mental pact with him: “Father, I’ll go visit you if you take care of my house…”.
Once in San Giovanni Rotondo, I confessed to the Father and the next day, when I went to greet him, he rebuked me: “Are you still here? And I’m sweating to hold the door for you!”
I set off immediately, not having understood what he had wanted to tell me. They had forced the lock, but nothing was missing at home.”
kids and candies
“It had been so long since I went to visit Padre Po that I felt haunted by the idea that he had forgotten about me.
One morning, after having entrusted my daughter to him, as usual, under his protection, I went to Mass. On the way back, I found the little girl savoring a piece of candy. Surprised, she asked him who she had given her the “melito”, as she called the sweets, and very happy she pointed out the portrait of Padre Po that dominated the playpen where she left the little girl during my brief absences.
I did not attach any importance to the episode and thought no more about it.
After some time, not being able to get the idea that Father Po had forgotten about me out of my head, I was finally able to go visit him. Immediately after the confession, when I went to kiss his hand, he told me laughing: “… did you also want a “melito”?”.
a bald man
“There were no remedies for my hair that was disappearing from my head, and I honestly disliked going bald. I went to Father Po and told him: “Father, pray that my hair does not fall out.”
The Father at that moment was going down the choir stairs. I looked at him anxiously waiting for an answer. When he was close to me, his countenance changed and with an expressive look he pointed to someone who was behind me and said: “Commend yourself to him.” I turned. Behind was a completely bald priest, with a head so shiny it looked like a mirror. We all burst out laughing.
the shoe
Once a countryman from Padre Po had a very bad toothache. As the pain did not leave him alone, his wife told him: “Why don’t you pray to Father Po to take away your toothache?? Look here is the picture of him, pray to him”. The man got angry and shouted furiously: “With the pain I have, do you want me to start praying???”. He immediately grabbed a shoe and threw it with all his might at the Father Po photo.
A few months later his wife convinced him to go to confession with Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo. He knelt in the confessional of the Father and, after saying all the sins he remembered, the Father said to him: “What else do you remember?” “Nothing else,” replied the man. “Nothing else?? And what about the shoe you gave me in the face?!
The “great, great” greeting
A spiritual daughter of Padre Pio had stayed at San Giovanni Rotondo for three weeks for the sole purpose of being able to confess to him. Not succeeding, she was already leaving for Switzerland profoundly sad, when she remembered that Padre Po gave the blessing every day from the window of her cell. She perked up with the idea that she would at least receive her blessing before she left and ran towards the convent. Along the way he was saying to himself: “I want a big, big greeting, just for me.” When he arrived he found that the people had left because the Father had already given him his blessing, he had greeted them all waving his handkerchief from his window and had retired to rest. A group of women praying the Rosary confirmed it. It was useless to wait. The lady was not discouraged by this and knelt down with the other women, saying to herself: “It doesn’t matter, I want a big, big greeting, just for me.” A few minutes later the window of the Father’s cell was opened and the Father, after giving his blessing again, began to wave a sheet in greeting instead of using his handkerchief. They all laughed and a woman commented: “Look, the father has gone crazy!” The spiritual daughter of the father began to cry with emotion. She knew it was the “big, big” greeting she had asked for herself.
A boy and candies
A boy, the son of a civil guard, wanted to have a little electric train for a long time. Approaching the Three Kings party, he went to a portrait of Padre Po hanging on the wall, and made him this promise: “Hey, Padre Po, if you get me a little electric train, I’ll bring you a package of candy.”
On the day of the Holy Kings, the boy received the long-awaited little train.
After some time, the boy went with his aunt to San Giovanni Rotondo. Father Po, paternal and smiling, asked him: “And the candies, where are they?”
For two figs!
A lady devoted to Father Po ate a couple of figs too many one day. She assailed by her scruples, because it seemed to her that she had committed a sin of gluttony, she promised that she would go as soon as she could to confess to Father Po. At the same time she went to San Giovanni Rotondo and at the end of confession she told her father, very concerned: “Father, I have the feeling that I am forgetting some sin, perhaps it is something serious”. The Father told him: “Don’t worry any more. Not worth it. For two figs!”
Do you expect me to marry her?
Father Po was celebrating a wedding. At the climax of the act, the groom, very emotional, could not pronounce the “s” of the rite.
The Father waited a bit, trying to help him with a smile, but seeing that all attempts were in vain, he exclaimed forcefully: “Well, do you want to say this “yes” or do you expect me to marry her?!”
Father, pray for my children!
A lady very devoted to Padre Po never went to sleep without first entrusting her children to him. Every night she knelt in front of the image of the Father and told him: “Father Po, pray for my little children.” After three years of praying the same prayer every day, she was able to go to San Giovanni Rotondo. When she saw the Father she told him: “Father, pray for my little children.” “I know, my daughter”, the Father told her, “for three years you have been repeating the same thing to me every day!”.
And you mock!
A devotee of Padre Po knelt every day in front of the father’s image and asked for his blessing. Her husband, despite being also devoted to her father, was dying of laughter and made fun of her because he considered that it was an exaggeration of hers. Every night the same scene was repeated between the spouses. Once the two of them went to visit Padre Po and the man told him: “Father, my wife asks for her blessing every night.” “I know,” answered the Father, “and you make fun of it!”
bilocations
Father Po prays to Saint Po X
Once Cardinal Merry del Val told Pope Pius XII that he had seen Father Po praying in Saint Peter’s in front of the tomb of Saint Pius X, on the day of the canonization of Saint Therese. The Pope asked Blessed Don Orione what he thought of the matter. Don Orione replied: “I saw it too. He was on his knees praying to Saint Po X. He looked at me with a smile and then disappeared.”
Father Po in Uruguay
Bishop Damiani, a Uruguayan bishop, went to San Giovanni Rotondo to confess to Father Po. After confessing he stayed a few days in the convent. One night he felt ill and Father Po was called to give him the last rites. Father Po took a long time to arrive and when he did he said to him:
“I already knew that you will not die. You will return to your diocese and work a few more years for the glory of God and the good of souls”. “Well”, replied Monsignor Damiani, “I will go but if you promise me that you will come to assist me at the hour of my death”. Father Po hesitated for a few moments and then said “I promise.”
Monsignor Damiani returned to Uruguay and worked for four years in his diocese.
In the year 1941 Monsignor Alfredo Viola celebrated his priestly silver jubilee. For this event, all the Uruguayan bishops and some Argentines met in the city of Salto, Uruguay. Among them was Monsignor Damiani, suffering from angina pectoris. Around midnight the Archbishop of Montevideo, later Cardinal Antonio Mara Barbieri, woke up hearing a knock at his door. A Capuchin friar appeared in his room and told him: “Go immediately to Monsignor Damiani. He is dying”. Monsignor Barbieri ran to Monsignor Damiani’s bedroom, just in time for him to receive last rites and write on a piece of paper: “Father Po…” and he couldn’t…