Interesting facts from St Pio

1. His real name was not Pio, but Francesco. He was born on May 25, 1887 in Pietrelcina, Italy, and was named Francesco, named after a little brother of his who was born a year before him and died.

2. He received the ‘stigmas’. For forty years he had hands, feet and sides, wounds like Jesus', from which blood flowed that smelled like flowers. He covered them with gloves because he didn't like to show them. They hurt a lot; They didn't heal, but they never got infected.

3. I could read the consciences and predict future events. Crowds came to confess with him. He spent an average of sixteen hours a day confessing. He knew people's sins before he confessed them.
He knew who the next Popes would be, including St. John Paul II.

4. He struggled physically with the devil. At night, creepy noises were heard in his cell, shouts, blows that terrified the other friars. In the end he was physically battered, but spiritually victorious.

5. He saw his Guardian Angel. He talked with him and asked for help. For example, when a friend, wanting to ensure that if someone intercepted his letter, did not understand it, he wrote the father in Greek, he asked his Angel to translate it.

6. He was visited by souls from Purgatory. Souls used to appear asking for Masses to leave Purgatory. He asked them data about his death, checked his truthfulness, and interceded for them before Jesus.

7. He had the gift of bilocation. On one occasion, a dying person was presented in a house, and then it was found that at the same time he was in the convent.

8. Started the ‘Prayer Groups of Padre Pio’. Today there are millions of these groups worldwide. Its members commit themselves to pray, to do good deeds and to love the Church, and keep in mind this motto of the father: "Pray, wait and don't worry."

9. His physical condition was medically unexplained. I hardly slept; Sometimes his only food was the Eucharist. During his ecstasy he remained dead; and its temperature rose so much that it broke the thermometer. It reached more than 48 degrees.

10. A great proportion of his body remains incorrupt. Padre Pio died in San Giovanni Rotondo on September 23, 1968. His body is in a glass urn, and he looks as if he were asleep. He was canonized in 2002.