Padre Pio. C. Bernard Ruffin
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step out of the way of an ant rather than step on it. “Poor little creature, why should it die?” he would say.15 Orazio Forgione’s most characteristic trait, however, was joy. He loved to sing in a booming, resonant voice and was hailed as a wonderful storyteller. Seeing the hand of God all about him, he rejoiced in everything, radiating “a contagious joy about him which communicated itself to others.”16
Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio, the only child of Fortunato De Nunzio (c. 1821–1896) and Maria Giovanna Gagliardi (1831–1908), was a year and a half her husband’s senior, born March 28, 1859. She was evidently from a more socially prominent family than Orazio, and some of her relatives initially disapproved of her marriage to him. She had light blue eyes and was as tall as her husband. Even in her sixties, according to Mary Pyle, in whose home Giuseppa spent her last days, she had “a slim body like a teenager and very small feet.” Like her husband, she was extremely devout. As an act of mortification, she abstained from eating meat, not just on the obligatory Fridays, but also on Wednesdays and Saturdays. (That such was an option for her is indicative of the family’s comparatively high social standing, as most peasant families seldom had access to much meat.) Nearly everyone remarked about the grace and elegance of the woman sometimes called “The Little Princess,” who was always clad, from head to toe, in spotless white. She conversed in the local Neapolitan dialect — rather than in standard Italian — as most people of her age and class did, but Pyle, an aristocratic American, marveled how she “spoke her hard vernacular with marvelous grace.”17 Beppa prefaced all her plans with, “If God is willing.” Unlike many residents of small towns, she refused to gossip or criticize people behind their backs. Those who knew her were usually struck by her intelligence and sense of hospitality: “She was happier when she could give than when she could receive.”18
“Otto Bambini”
The Forgiones lived in a modest stone house at 27-28 Vico Storte Valle (Crooked Valley Lane) in the Castle District, the oldest part of Pietrelcina, which had grown up around the site of the old castle, which had long since fallen into ruins. The Forgione domicile seems originally to have been two small houses, since one had to exit the door of Number 27 to get to Number 28. Number 27 consisted of a single room with a single window. This was used as the parents’ bedroom. Number 28 consisted of a kitchen, where cooking was done at a large open hearth, and another, smaller room, which served as the girls’ bedroom. The Forgiones owned another dwelling a few doors away, a single room called “The Tower,” because it was accessed by steep treacherous steps and afforded a wonderful view of the rolling farmland beyond it. This served as the boys’ bedroom.
The home of the Forgiones was simply furnished with the bare necessities for health and comfort. The lime-painted walls were adorned with crucifixes and lithographs of the Madonna and various saints. After the children were born, visitors were amazed at the great number of books heaped onto a square table in the parents’ bedroom.19 Although neither parent could read, they wanted their children to have an education and provided for them accordingly.
A year after Orazio and Giuseppa were married, on June 25, 1882, a son, Michele, was born, named after Gra’s father. Two years later a second boy was born, who was given the name Francesco. Some say that he was named for Saint Francis, to whom Orazio had a great devotion. Others believe that, like most of the other children, he was named for a relative, in this case one of Orazio’s uncles. This child lived only twenty days. A third child, Amalia, also died in infancy. Then on May 25, 1887, at 5:30 p.m. according to the parish register, but at 10 p.m. according to the records of the town clerk, a fourth child came into the world and was given the name of his dead brother Francesco. This was the child who would later be known as Padre Pio.20
According to family tradition, when he was baptized the next day at the parish church of Saint Anna by Padre Nicolantonio Orlando, his mother dedicated him to the Virgin Mary. It is not known whether she did this with the other children, but one might assume that she did.
Francesco II — called “Franci” (Frankie) — was followed on September 15, 1889, by a sister named for her grandmother Felicita D’Andrea, who had died two years before. The sixth child, born March 15,1892, was named for Orazio’s maternal grandmother, Pellegrina Cardone. A seventh child, born the day after Christmas in 1894, was named Grazia and called Graziella (Gracie). Most sources state that she was the youngest child.
There are some who insist that there was an eighth child, Mario, who was supposedly born March 24, 1899, and lived for eleven months. Padre Pio’s niece Pia (born in the 1920s) told the author that Mario did in fact exist. However, there are no civil or church records of his birth or death, and many doubt that there was a fourth brother, however short-lived. In later years, when Padre Pio performed weddings, he often wished the couple otto bambini — eight babies — and some assume that this was because he was one of eight siblings.
“The God-Is-Everything People”
When the church bell rang at daybreak, the Forgione family rose for morning prayers. Then Orazio saddled his donkey and started for the family plots in the area outside town known as the Piana Romana. During the summer, he would stop either at the parish church or at the town hall to hire several braccianti who congregated there, hoping to be hired for the day by one of the landowners. Beppa and the children would follow Orazio on foot, making the one-hour trek to the farm.
The Forgione farm was very small, by American standards — only five acres, according to some accounts, three by others. It yielded grapes, wheat, Indian corn, olives, figs, and plums. Orazio and Giuseppa also raised sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and occasionally kept a milk cow or two and some hogs. On a lane near their plot, they had a cottage with a dirt floor, which stood in a row of similar dwellings, owned by neighboring families. There they stored their equipment, kept their animals, and, in summer, cooked, ate, and slept. There were only two beds: one for the parents and one for some of the children. When the entire family stayed at the Piana Romana, some of the children had to stay next door with the Scocca family, who owned the adjoining farm and, like almost everybody else in Pietrelcina, were distant relatives. Around the cottage, Beppa kept a garden, where she grew roses, wallflowers, and carnations. When water was needed, she fetched it from a nearby well in a huge jug and balanced it on her head.
Padre Pio had pleasant memories of summers on the farm. He and his siblings played with the Scocca children, one of whom, Mercurio, shared with him the same year of birth and, later, of death. Summer evenings, when the work was done, Franci would go with his family and the Scoccas to visit neighbors on adjoining farms. There, in the moonlight, they would eat macaroni and sing. As an old man, Padre Pio spoke with deep affection of the green fields, dotted with leafy elms and cooled by fresh spring water, through which he and his siblings “roamed as little kings in a kingdom without confines, whose only law was that of the Good Creation.”21 With great nostalgia he spoke of the circle of friends with whom he and his family spent so many happy times, doubting if the world would ever again see the like of the stolid, happy, pious yeomen farmers around whom he spent his youth.
Winters, the children amused themselves playing in front of the parish church of St. Anna, sometimes called the Castle Church. Nights were enlivened by storytelling, both by their father and by their maternal grandmother, Giovanna Gagliardi.
Christ was at the center of the Forgione family, whom neighbors sometimes called the “God-Is-Everything Family.”22 The Forgiones were seen in church every day, and evenings they knelt together to pray the Rosary. The baby sister, Graziella, who became a nun, in later years recalled that in her childhood home, prayer came before anything else. Whatever evening chores or diversions were planned took place only after prayer. Most of the stories that the children were told came from Scripture. Although Orazio could not read, somehow he memorized much of Sacred Scripture and transmitted his knowledge to his children in the form of entertaining stories.
Of utmost importance to the Forgione family were the Madonna and the saints, who were seen almost as members of the family. They were so close at hand that it was unthinkable for the Forgiones not to try to enlist their help, just as they might enlist the help of their neighbors. They felt that they were not alone before the