Father Po, says one of his superiors, is a priest who assiduously fulfills his duties of state. He gets up at half past three and gets ready for Mass in his cell so as not to disturb anyone, and then goes straight to the sacristy.
At first, women lined up to go to confession from two in the morning, and sometimes the police had to direct the crowd that gathered around the confessional. From January 1950, all penitents had to get an order number to avoid confusion. In 1952 the same system had to be adopted for men as well.
Confessing is his main vocation, the one that allows him to appease his insatiable thirst for souls. He wishes to be considered exclusively as a confessor. He does not preach, and the Holy Office has prohibited him from writing since 1924. However, Father Po does not take into account the limits of physical resistance. he l he examines, judges, condemns and absolves according to what God inspires him. His confessional is more than a chair, more than a tribunal, it is a clinic for souls. He welcomes penitents in various ways, according to the needs of each one and without a preconceived plan. He opens his arms to him in an exuberance of joy, telling him where he comes from even before he has opened his mouth. And others he reproaches, admonishes and even treats rudely. Some he refuses to receive and tells them to come back later, when they are better prepared. The same affability, the same welcoming smile, the same severity is lavished on the wise man, the character, the humble and ignorant countryman.
The social condition of the penitent counts for nothing, he only sees his soul, his soul naked. It often happens that he has more indulgence with a great sinner who moves him by his ignorance of divine laws, than a believer who does not fulfill his religious duties, one of those people who say they are Catholic but who out of laziness do not dedicate even one word to God. hour per week. Where he does not find hypocrisy but sincerity, he is kind, with a benevolence that expands the heart of the penitent when he tells him: “Go in peace, Jesus has tested you and blesses you.” But he is sometimes surprised by his abruptness, when he denounces the scandal with harsh and sharp words, especially the gossip and lies of women. He was adamant about penitents who regard backbiting as a minor offense. Even more severely, he condemns Padre Pio’s sins against purity and motherhood, and he does not forgive without being sure of a firm and categorical purpose of amendment. The malefactors who go against the generation and marriage, must pass several months of trial before being acquitted.
He often closes the confessional peephole in the face of a penitent without questioning him. This has even happened with people who went to confession periodically elsewhere. why? Because he possesses the divine gift of seeing as in a flash what escapes ordinary confessors.
Padre Po, no doubt, suffers true agony when the Lord orders him to treat a soul harshly, but he does so so that his penitent becomes aware and understands that the Sacraments and Communion are not a matter of play. That it is something serious to wash his soul and receive Christ, that Christ Jesus whom Father Po loves, while the sinner and the crowd are unaware of him.
To one of his spiritual daughters who confessed that the sight of his enemies was unbearable for him, he replied: “If you do not love as the Lord wants you to love them, you will sign your own condemnation. Do good to your enemies for the love of Jesus.” “. Thus comments the evangelical text that says: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you and slander you, and thus you will be children of your Father who is in Heaven. Because if you love those who love you What merit do you have?
In what way does he confess? She often knows in advance what the penitent is going to tell her. If he forgets to mention any detail from the distant past, Father Po reminds him. He sometimes asks short questions that serve to shorten confessions and that are impressive proof of his double vision.
How can you know? The Father knows each penitent better than he knows himself, and by kneeling before him, the sinner sees his sins more clearly. However, the Father does not say everything that he discovers. Sometimes he stays silent, waiting. The penitent feels his conscience stirred to the depths, and he cannot keep secret the sin he concealed. He confesses it, and the confessor simply says, “That’s what he expected.”
A young man planned to kill his wife and pretend that it was a suicide, so that he could continue an illicit union smoothly. In order to avert all suspicion of guilt, she consented to escort his companion to San Giovanni. As soon as she set foot in the Church, he felt attracted by a magnetic force towards the sacristy, who is at the other end of the Church, behind the main altar. Padre Po, unoccupied at the time, approached him to question him. The man had not uttered a single word, when he felt that they took his arm and pushed him violently: “Get out, get out of here!” the friar shouted at him. Wretch! your wife’s blood?
The man fled as if pushed by a storm. For two days he wandered aimlessly. Unable to recover his calm, he returned to the monastery, and Father Po welcomed him as Jesus welcomed great sinners. When the man had finished his tremendous confession, he told her: “You have no children and you both wanted one. Go home, and your wish will be fulfilled.” When his wife, whom Father Po had never seen, came to confession one day, at the first words he spoke, he heard the Father tell her: “Don’t fear anything now, your husband won’t do you any harm.” After years of barrenness, she gave birth to a child.
A priest had gone to San Giovanni to confess to Padre Po, and had to change trains in Bologna. When he had finished his confession, the Father asked him if he had not omitted anything. The priest answered honestly that he did not remember anything else; then Father Po replied: “You did not do it with malice, but it is a serious negligence that has offended the Lord. You arrived in Bologna at five in the morning. As the churches were closed, you went to the hotel to rest a little before saying mass and fell asleep until three in the afternoon. It was no longer time for mass, and his negligence offended God”.
Before any word is uttered, Father Po knows if the person approaching him is sincere or not, if he is convinced or simply curious. A doctor once entered the sacristy, seemed to change his mind, and came out again. Who is that? I’ll be back, the Father flatly affirmed. In fact, the doctor returned very soon. Instantly the Father told him: You are a criminal, and you want to avoid the Tribunal. Read that letter once and for all! It was a recommendation from a friend. The doctor read it, turned pale, fell on his knees at the Father’s feet, begged for forgiveness and obtained it.
Our Capuchin can also read thoughts from a distance, as proven by an incalculable number of facts. Here’s one as a sample:
Two sisters had barely managed to get their father to allow them to go see Father Po, but they had formally promised him not to kiss his glove, that glove kissed by so many lips, for fear of contagion. The young women promised, but when they saw the Capuchin enter the church and the people crowd around him, they could not resist the temptation. Then he looked at them smiling: “Have you forgotten his promise?”
A well-known Italian doctor recounts that one night in January 1936, he was in Father Po’s cell with him and two other laymen. Suddenly the Capuchin kneels down and asks them to pray “for a soul that is about to appear before the tribunal of God.” They all knelt down, and then the Father asked them: do you know who you have prayed for? – No – was the answer. For the King of England.
Then the doctor intervened: but Father, I read in today’s newspapers that the King has a slight cold without any news. Father Po was content to reply: “Believe me.” When the newspapers arrived at noon, it was seen that the King of England had passed away at the precise moment that Father Po simultaneously asked his friends for his prayer.
A young woman from Benevento, whose husband had lost his sight, received this explanation from Father Po: “His blindness guarantees his salvation, he has to remain blind, it is a punishment that God sent him for having beaten his father.” The poor woman could not believe what she heard. As for her cripple, she began by denying, but ended by admitting that at the age of sixteen she had brutally beaten her father with an iron bar.
Father Po was a great worker in the confessional. But his soulseeing charisma gave him a very special tool, in his task of converting many of his visitors. For decades, thousands of people made pilgrimages to San Giovanni, seeking the healing of sins through an instrument such as the Santo del Gargano. How good it would be to find in these times many faithful eager to wash their souls with the water of mercy, like those who come to see Po. How good it would also be to find priests willing to sacrifice themselves in the confessional, as Father Po did.
The Mass of Father Po.
Since Father Pi makes the sign of the Cross at the foot of the altar of San Francisco, his face is transfigured. It is no longer just the priest who celebrates the Holy Sacrifice, he is also the man of God, the one chosen to bear witness to his existence, chosen to collaborate with God in the martyrdom of the five wounds, the officiant who is crucified with him and who dies mystically with him in each of the masses.
Christ dwells in Father Po and Father Po makes the incarnation of Christ his own. If Father Po were not modeled on Christ, how to explain the sufferings that are reflected in his face, the contractions of his body, his efforts to get up after his genuflections, as if the weight of the cross will overwhelm him? And what about his prolonged states of ecstasy, which transport him away from this chaotic world? He can be seen bowing his head, smiling that luminous smile with which he accepts the requests of his faithful, and suddenly he explodes, and his tears fall profusely. The witnesses remain mute and motionless at this Mass whose celebration lasts two hours. Two hours?. No, it seems like two minutes! The faithful of yesterday, those of all times and even those who were never believers, all on their knees, seem nailed to the ground, their eyes fixed on those diaphanous hands. Ecstatic persuasion that transforms unbelievers, Masons, Protestants, atheists, into ardent Catholics. At the request of Pius XII, after the liberation of Rome, thousands of American soldiers were authorized to attend Padre Pio’s Mass, resulting in the conversion of many Protestant boys.
The moment of the Consecration is always the climax of the Padre Po Mass. He raises the Host, the Body of Christ, and remains motionless for long, endless minutes. His prayers reach Heaven, while he admires Our Lord Present in the Eucharist. When he is asked why he spends so much time at the Consecration, he simply answers: Is there a time to pray to the Lord?
Po is the testimony of the importance of the Eucharist as the center of…