to be familiar with them. Although Padre Evangelista continued nervous and troubled, Padre Pio awoke bright and cheerful.
The digestive ailment persisted. Before the friars left Naples to return to Venafro, Padre Pio suggested that they stop for dinner at a restaurant. “Do you want to throw up in front of all those people?” Padre Evangelista asked. “Do you want to make a spectacle of yourself?” Padre Pio was feeling well and assured him that nothing would happen. He downed two courses — then had to run to the window and vomit into the flower beds outside.
At Venafro, the vomiting persisted. The only nourishment that Pio was able to retain was the sacred Host, which was brought to him in his room. He became too weak even to celebrate Mass.
Up to this point, Padre Pio had been regarded by his confreres simply as a good religious suffering from an undiagnosable and probably fatal illness. The stigmata had disappeared, and no one at Venafro — not even Padre Agostino — was aware that the marks had ever existed. The only people privy to this secret — Pannullo, Benedetto, Cardone, Scocca, and the doctor who thought the wounds were the result of tuberculosis — kept it well.
Between Heaven and Hell
One day Padre Agostino, advised that Padre Pio was doing very poorly, entered his room to find the young man raving about a huge black cat he said was about to pounce on him. Padre Agostino was convinced that Padre Pio was hallucinating and about to die, so he withdrew to the choir to pray for him. During his prayers, his mind wandered, and, thinking that he would be asked to preach at Padre Pio’s funeral, he began to plan what he would say.
When he returned to Padre Pio’s room, he was amazed to find his friend lucid and cheerful. “You went to the choir to pray,” he said, “and that was fine, but you also thought about my funeral eulogy. … There’s time, Lector, there’s plenty of time!”7 Needless to say, Padre Agostino was astounded.
On another occasion, Padre Pio asked Padre Agostino to remember him in prayer when he was saying Mass, and Padre Agostino agreed. He remembered his promise while going downstairs to the church, but forgot all about Padre Pio while he was celebrating Mass. When Padre Pio asked him if he had remembered to pray for him, Padre Agostino, embarrassed, lied and said, “Surely, I remembered.” Padre Agostino was dumbfounded at Padre Pio’s reply: “Well, at least Jesus accepted the intention that you made while you were going down the stairs.”8
Padre Agostino was not the only other resident at the friary who observed extraordinary things. One day Padre Guglielmo and the sixty-seven-year-old doorkeeper, Fra Cherubino of Morcone, were keeping Padre Pio company. The vestments used by the priests were regularly laundered in town. Fra Cherubino looked at his watch and excused himself, because he had to go to the door to meet the lady who was bringing the vestments at any moment. “You don’t have to go to the door now,” Padre Pio told the doorkeeper. “Save your energy. Wait here. She’s going to be one hour late.” Fra Cherubino remained. One hour later, Padre Pio told him to go to the door. Fra Cherubino did so, and found the laundry lady, who had just arrived and hadn’t even had time to knock.9
Padre Agostino spent a great deal of time in Padre Pio’s room and became convinced that he was neither delirious nor insane. Sometimes, rather crassly, he brought his students to observe him, because he and Padre Evangelista were in agreement that some of Padre Pio’s experiences were true cases of ecstasy, and they wanted the students to have the opportunity to observe such phenomena firsthand.
Padre Agostino observed that Padre Pio went into ecstasy two or three times a day. He transcribed everything that Padre Pio said while in ecstasy on seven occasions, although many others he did not record. These celestial encounters, in which Padre Pio seemed to converse with Jesus, Mary, and his guardian angel, were preceded or followed usually by diabolical vexations. The heavenly colloquies, Padre Agostino observed, usually lasted between thirty and forty-five minutes, while the demonic encounters usually lasted less than fifteen minutes.
Padre Agostino observed ten “diabolical apparitions.” In one of them, Padre Pio was terrified by a black cat that no one else could see. In another, he had a vision of a naked woman who “danced lasciviously” in his room. Another time, the devil invisibly spat in his face. On yet another occasion, Padre Pio complained of hideous noises which nobody else could hear.
One day Padres Evangelista and Agostino were horrified to discover Padre Pio writhing as if he were being repeatedly struck. Alarmed, they fell to their knees and began to pray and sprinkle him and the room with holy water. After a quarter of an hour, Padre Pio came to himself and said that he had been flogged by horrible men who looked like executioners. Other times he said demons appeared in the form of various friends, colleagues, and superiors, even in the forms of Pius X (the current pope) and Jesus, Mary, Saint Francis, and his guardian angel. He recognized the diabolical ruse through a certain feeling of disgust and by insisting that his visitors praise Jesus. When they refused to do so, he knew that they were from the devil.
Padre Pio made his confessions to Padre Agostino, but one morning Padre Agostino did not have the time and told the sick priest to go ahead and partake of the Eucharist, and he would hear his confession that evening. When he appeared in Padre Pio’s room that evening as he had promised, Padre Agostino was puzzled when the ailing friar gazed at him with an expression of fear and distrust.
“Are you my lector?” Padre Pio asked.
“Of course I am! Why do you ask such a peculiar question?” replied Padre Agostino.
Looking intently into his eyes, Padre Pio demanded, “Say: ‘Praise Jesus!’”
“Praise Jesus a thousand times!” Padre Agostino replied. “Now, tell me what happened.”
Padre Pio then related how, shortly after Padre Agostino had left him in the morning, there was a knock on his door, and there was Padre Agostino back again — or what appeared to be Padre Agostino. The lector said that he was now ready to hear Pio’s confession. Padre Pio, however, felt an unaccountable disgust. Moreover, although “Agostino” looked as he always did, he had a wound on his forehead that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. When Padre Pio asked what had happened, “Agostino” replied, “Oh, I fell while I was going downstairs. Now, son, I’m here to hear your confession.”
“Say, ‘Praise Jesus,’” Padre Pio demanded.
“No!” shouted the demon who had taken Padre Agostino’s form — and vanished into thin air.10
When he went into ecstasy, Padre Pio spoke, quite coherently, to various unseen visitors. Agostino wrote down what Padre Pio said, seeing and hearing nothing of those to whom the young priest was speaking. From Padre Pio’s words, however, it is possible to capture the general sense of the dialogue.
The first ecstasy that Padre Agostino transcribed took place on November 28, 1911, between 9:45 and 11:00 a.m. When it began, Padre Pio seemed to be talking with the Virgin Mary. Then he began to pray for various souls, addressing Jesus as he would a friend:
O Jesus, I commend that soul to you … You must convert her! You can do it! … Convert her, save her! … Don’t only convert her, for then it might be possible for her to lose your grace, but sanctify her. Yes, sanctify her…. Oh, didn’t you shed your blood for her, too? … O Jesus, convert that man…. You can do it. Yes, you can! … I offer all myself for him.
The desire to offer himself as a victim for the conversion of sinners was a theme that ran powerfully throughout the ecstasies that Padre Agostino recorded.
After pleading with the Lord to “stay a little longer,” Padre Pio reproached him for leaving him at the mercy of the devil the previous morning: “Ah, how he frightened me! … Jesus, don’t let him come anymore! … I’d rather forfeit the sweetness of your presence than have that fiend come back again!” Then Pio exclaimed in rapture:
O Jesus, another thing — I love you … very much. I want to be all yours. … Don’t you see that I am burning for you? … You ask love from me — love, love, love. See, I love you…. Come into my being every morning [through the