The Exorcist Files - The Mystery and Wonder of Padre Pio

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Father Martins shares the life and times of one of the most popular and mysterious saints, Padre Pio.Thank you to our sponsors!Take your food to the next level with Graza Olive Oil. Visit https://graza.co/EXFILES and use promo code EXFILES today for 10% off your first order!Download Echo Prayer for free and make prayer a daily habit. Visit echoprayer.com or find Echo in the App Store.”Check out Conceiving Crime, a new podcast Father Martins enjoys. Coming Soon- Ryan will interview theologians, pastors, members of the team and many more to talk theology and how the show has changed their own views. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When they were standing in front of him or with an eye shot, the demons were struck with a terror because there was something holy within Padre Pio. And so they would begin a manifestation. And so Pater Pio might come and walk in front of that person and trace the sign of the cross and they would be delivered. And I say might because sometimes he didn't have to do that. He could just pray from a distance. And for all intents and purposes, it looked like holy cow. Like, you know, Mrs. Shephaus just for. fell on her back and started writhing. She clearly has a demon. Padre Pio turned his head towards her and looked at her for maybe half a second and then just walked away as if nothing was happening. Like, why did he ignore her? And then all of a sudden, she gets up and she's perfectly fine. In other words, he didn't have to do anything overtly. That the conversation, the dialogue between he and God and he and the devil was of such an astounding nature. That was enough. to liberate Mrs. Shephouse. Welcome back to the Exorcist Files,

the feel-good spiritual warfare podcast of the season. I'm your co-host, Ryan Biffay, with your weekly intro and announcements. First, the best news. New case files are coming soon. As promised, we have a few more case files for you, dramatized into 3D audio for your listening enjoyment and edification.

These should drop in about a month or so, so stay tuned, tell your friends, and well, we think you're really going to love them. Secondly, we want to honor one of our partners, the Echo Prayer app. You all know we love prayer on the show. In fact, whenever Father Martins or any of the exorcists are asked about the best ways to keep evil away, they always say, you must pray. I personally have seen how prayers changed my own life, and honestly, how many times have you told someone I'm praying for you?

And then you forget, you don't. This is an app that reminds you to pray. It lets you make prayer lists, and honestly, it's really easy to use. And it's free. That's Echo Prayer app. You can check it out where you get your apps in the app stores or go to echo prayer.com. That's echo prayer.com. Lastly, as I've shared on this show, producing it has been a really fun challenge to my theology.

And the experience has really forced me to think deeply on a lot of issues that I honestly hadn't before. This is true for other members of our team as well. So with that, we will be in the future releasing some bonus content with me interviewing other members of the X-Files team, theologians, friends of the show, just to react and share their own experiences with it. So stay tuned for that. You can click in the show notes to find that. Okay. With that, today we bring you the life and times of one very special Padre.

And that is Padre Pio. Here to help us bilocate into the beauty of the mystery of this most famous saint is our very own special Padre, Father Carlos Martins. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, where we are here with the Padre talking about another important Padre. Father Martins is here to discuss the one and the only Padre Pio. Father Martins, how are we doing, sir? Yeah, we're great, Ryan.

Good to be here with you. Awesome. Well, I know this was a very requested episode, and obviously I have less exposure to the saints, but I think I've heard Padre Pio is the favorite of more of my Catholic friends than almost anyone. Is that a normal result from a sample size? Is Padre Pio, like, one of the most popular saints of all time?

Easily. And it's that for a number of reasons. Within Padre Pio, there was a tremendous incarnation of gifts. God really endowed him with extraordinary things. Like his life was a mystical storybook every day. But he didn't live eight centuries ago. You know, he only died in 1968. So the man is a modern saint.

And in this modern saint, you had absolutely epical, mystical phenomena that people be held. And there are people today that knew him. And I know some of them. I know some that remember their encounters with him. And their family members did. And they can recall the experiences they had with him in which normal rules of kind of physicality and, you know, straightforward logic just didn't apply where he knew he could read their soul. He knew things about them that no one did. And he guided them and shepherd them towards the Lord. and change their lives permanently. Well, maybe just to tease a little bit out of the episode

because there are no shortage of great Padre Pio anecdotes. But, Father, is there one particular anecdotes maybe that we could use to as an appetizer here before we get into a little bit of who he was in his ministry? Yeah, so I have a good friend who lives in New York and his grandfather was Italian and went back to Italy. In fact, this grandfather, grew up next door to Padre Pio in Pietrochino.

So this family, the Riali family, they lived in the farm adjacent to the farm of the family of Padre Pio. And so, you know, he comes to America, this man, and, you know, he begins a business here and does quite well. And then he goes back to Italy. And he hears about this next door. of his that is now larger than life. And he lives as a Capuchin friar, Capuchin Franciscan in San Giovanni Rotunda, which it's less than 20 miles away from Foggia on the Adriatic

side of Italy, on the eastern side of Italy. And so he takes a drive out there. And there are hundreds of people waiting in line to go to confession to Padre Pugh. He's annoyed by this. he doesn't practice his faith. Like, do I really have to wait in line to do? But he does. So he waits his three, four hours of whatever he is until it's his turn to go to the confessional. And then he gets into the confessional.

Now, Padre Pio doesn't know who he is because there's a screen in the way. And that's the point of confession is to make you anonymous, to make it inviting for people to go and disclose their sins because your personal identity really doesn't matter. It doesn't factor into any of this, just the fact that you want to reconcile with God. So your identity to the priest is irrelevant for the sacrament of confession. And so he gets down and kneels in that confessional and Padre Pio says to him, what are you doing here? You donkey, you worthless dog. You don't want communion with God.

You don't want reconciliation with Christ. You do this, this, this and this with impunity. you don't intend to reconcile with God right get out of here before I throw you out get out of my confession now he's screaming this Padra Pio Pio is at the top of his lungs and this church in San Giovanni Rotundu is not a large church there's not a single human being in that church who is not hearing this transpire between the two of them get out before I throw you out And so he gets up and he, you know, he's mortified and just a rage with anger. And he just leaves from that place just furious.

And he spends all night awake and he's just seeing red. And the next day, he decides to go back and give Padre Pio a piece of his mind. And so he shows up at the church again. And this time he doesn't stand in line. He walks right to the front of the line. He waits for the penitent. who's inside the confessional to come out, and he just jumps right in. And Padre Pio turns to him and says, good, I was afraid you weren't going to come back.

Now make your confession and get right with God. And so in that narrative, you know, that wasn't part of his script. So he's just taken aback by this. But he's confronted with this gentle priest now inviting him. Now all of that is behind us. if you want to make your peace with God. And obviously he was convinced because Padre Pio didn't know him from a hole in the ground. And yet he knew exactly who he was.

Right. There's no way on a physical level that he could have known who has come into his confession. But yet he knew. And now he knew he was back. And he's inviting him now. Okay, this is the time to get right with God. And so that was the beginning. of an absolutely dramatic conversion for him, and it changed his life.

And in fact, that man led the effort of the Italian Catholics in Jamaica, Queens, New York to fundraise and build the church that now stands in Pietrochina in honor of Padre Pio, a magnificent church. And it was all begun by that penitent. So I'm good friends with his grandson. I've been to their house numerous times. and one of my best friends of the world, the whole family has become. And, you know, so these are people that knew him.

Now, the incident was with his grandfather, but even Michael himself, the grandson, remembers him. He received his first communion from Padropio, received his confirmation. And in fact, when his mother was pregnant with him, his mother received a healing. She was advised to have an abortion because of where the baby. was. So she needed a surgery in utero. And so the whole family prayed. And the surgeon, who was a Jew, began the surgery. And he held up the scalpel to make the incision on her. And then what he said, what he described is, my hand, it's like something invisible grabbed it and moved the

position. And I found myself making the incision in a spot where I did not want to make the incision. But I did it. And that was the key to saving the baby. And so I have a friend today alive in New York because of it. Now, when she went to Padra Pio to thank him, all she did was in her prayers request his intervention. In other words, he didn't know the full effect of it. He just knew that there was a problem, the baby's in jeopardy. When she went back to thank him, he smacked her in the head. and said, you considered an abortion, and which was true. She hadn't told anybody, but he knew. God had planted that knowledge in him, and so he said, you need to repent and get your life right with God.

And he walked away. So within Padre Pio was the reminder writ large that God sees everything, and you can't hide your life from God. Father Martin's here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ. Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th, but this isn't just a 90-day program. Exodus 90 is a spirituality for modern men that is built on three ancient pillars, prayer, self-sacrifice, and fraternity. We all long for something more. We long to be the men God created us to be, sons of a loving father. It's time to turn away from our idols.

It's time to break free from the pharaohs that hold us in bondage. If you're ready to make a fresh start and embark on a journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ, then download the Exodus 90 app today. This is your chance to break free, refocus, and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the new year. It starts January 20th. So go to Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to join tens of thousands of men from all over the world for Exodus 90. Again, it begins Monday, January, January 20th. God bless you. Wow. All right. Well, we knew there'd be no shortage of Padre Pio's stories.

So we'll get into some more. But give us the kind of concise little history corner of who was Padre Pio? When was he around? And perhaps even more importantly, why are we talking about him today? What makes him so significant and so popular? Yeah. So Padre Pio was born as Francesco Forgione, the son of a poor farmer in Pietro Chena, Italy. Pietrochina is a farming town in the southern Italian region near Campania. He was born in 1887, died in 1968, so he died at 81 years old. So obscure boy from an obscure family in an obscure town at a time when almost everybody in Italy was born that way.

And so he felt a call as an adolescent, as a very young child, to the religious life. and he joined the Caputians, which is an order of Franciscans, that take the call to poverty very serious. So Francis's genius, his religious genius, was in embracing a call and calling for an embracing of poverty. And within that poverty, within a repudiation of all forms of luxury, that there is a tremendous freedom, that one's love of God is able to exist and to be lived in an unhindered way when it is not encumbered by the goods of the earth. And so the Franciscans lived that to an absolutely strict way. So, for example, they don't wear shoes. At most, they wear sandals. They eat very simply, very poorly. Their rooms would be very sparsely decorated. They have basically the bare essentials,

and that's it. And obviously, as Franciscans, they own nothing. Everything is held in common, and so there's no personal possession of any one of the brothers, any one of the friars. He was ordained a priest in 1910, and he had already been a capuchin for at least seven years by that point. And he was assigned to the monastery at San Giovanni Rotundo, which is a small poor town in southern Italy on the eastern side, so on the Adriatic side of Italy, only maybe five miles maximum, less than 10 kilometers from the coast, from the water. And save for two periods of military conscription where he had to be part of the First World War as part of the Italian Army's medical corps, save for those two brief periods. He lived at San Giovanni

Rotunda for the rest of his life. And then in 1918, something extraordinary happened, and it was an event called the transverbation of the heart of Padrupeo. So there was a kind of transfiguration where God came to him in a mystical way. And it was marked and characterized by the stigmata, by the wounds of the crucifixion of Christ, which at first were invisible, and then eventually became visible. So he had the mark of the nails and the hands in his side, and I've seen the night shirt that he was wearing. So I guess the best way to describe it would be a tunic, a simple white cloth tunic that would be worn like a t-shirt, the bottom of which goes down to one's ankles. So I saw the thing. And in addition to the stigmata that I've just described,

there was the mark of the scourging on his back. Like you could see open wounds and you could see scabs that remain on this cloth to this day. That began a period of mystical transformation where the crucified and suffering Christ became incarnate, if you will, within Padre Pio, or maybe even better stated, that Padre Pio, in a sense, became present within the incarnate crucified Christ. And there was a mystical sharing of the suffering of the crucifixion, which remained with him throughout his entire life until a few days before his. death where it just mystically disappeared and all the wounds, all the scars disappeared as well.

But for most of his life, Padre Pio bore these wounds on his body, could perform the miraculous and did so. And these miraculous events rolled off of him daily. People would come to him with petitions and he would pray and sometimes he prayed in advance like he would be given an illumination as to who was going to come and what was going to be asked of him. Sometimes it was on the spot. And I'm sure that there were some people that weren't healed that didn't get what they want. But an absolutely astounding amount would present their petition. And then he replies, don't worry, everything is going to be fine. Or, you know what, go down the street,

there's the Church of Our Lady of Grace is there, go to the altar on the left side to the left altar, and there make a prayer and make an offering, a financial offering to the poor. And then God will grant your miracle. And sure enough, there were just a plethora of people that would come back and report that they received exactly what they wanted. And in many cases, even more than that, even more than what they were requesting. So Padre Pio was somebody in whom the mystery of God was writ large. And people were able to encounter that every day. All right, Father, before we move on, because we did touch on the stigmata and some of the stuff that the Franciscans adhere to, which I did want to ask quickly, what is the motivation, for those of us outside, maybe church history and outside understanding the Franciscan order, what would be the motivation to not wear shoes or sandals? And when you kind of get into these vows of poverty, et cetera, what is the intent behind that? And why do some religious orders practice that? Well, yeah, and most religious orders practice that. The reason for that is to clear what is unimportant out of your life, so it does not become a distraction for what is important. And what is important boils down to two things.

One is to love God with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, and the second is to do what God desires. And so if your interests, if your attention, are divided, between those two things and something else, then those two things suffer as a result of it. So get rid of everything else, and then you've got nothing left on your plate but that which is important.

And so that's what the embracing of poverty does, right? So that you are not owned by your things. And the way to not be owned by your things is to own nothing. You know, Jesus wore sandals, right? So I guess, you know, not to be facetious, the whole no shoes thing, I guess, is a bit, you know, is there any, it's not hinting that the pain or discomfort of the shoes is helpful. Is there, I guess, what's the line between too much asceticism and, like, willful kind of pain to bring about formation, you know, self-lidulation

kind of thing, I guess. Is there any trace of that or what's, I guess, just help me understand why, if Jesus wore shoes, why an order might say no shoes. Well, I don't know that Jesus wore shoes. He wore what was common for the day. But if you're looking at, did Jesus Christ embrace poverty? I mean, we're talking about God Almighty, who incarnated himself as a human being. No one embraced poverty more than Jesus Christ. He could have been wearing the finest things that the world has to offer, and he still would have been embracing poverty. So Christ himself wouldn't be, I think the best example of that. The point of the vow of poverty that religious orders take is to free yourself from the distraction

that goods can give you. So I remember, for example, there was a friend of my fathers who she did almost no maintenance on his house. So, I mean, he needed a walkway to go from his driveway to the door of his house. He didn't have one. Every time it rained, it got muddy, which means he got muddy when he was doing that walk, and everybody else did when they were doing the walk. And so everybody told him, look, why don't you just pour a sidewalk there or put some interlocking stones or say?

And his response was, if I do that, then I have to take care of it. If I don't have it, I don't have to take care of it. Now, that's an example, and maybe it's an extreme example. Look, it was something that the guy needed. but he was aware that when I have something, it's going to demand my attention and my labor. If I don't have it, then it won't. And that principle there is what is at play

in religious orders that embrace poverty, and frankly, for individuals who do. You don't have to be a member of a religious order to live a kind of poverty of spirit and to live a life of radical simplicity. Got it. And I guess this ties into the next thing you mentioned about the stigmata. So this concept of the stigmata, was this something that we know

obviously is connected right with Christ's wounds, but had there been other saints who had experienced this, or was this coming to the conversation with Padre Pio? And then what would you imagine is the point of the manifestation of stigmata? From someone saying, wow, that just looks like arbitrary pain inserted on him for someone who's out there doing full-time ministry. Walk us through kind of the significance of the stigmata. Yeah, so Padre Pio, was not the first person in history to receive the stigmata. The first recorded case was a thousand years before him, and it was the case of St. Francis of Assisi. So he is the first recorded case, but there were others in the intervening years. One of those, for example, was St. Rita of Kasha,

who received the stigmata of just one single wound from the crown of thorns on her forehead. and it would bleed as if there was a thorn poking her. And there were times where people actually saw a thorn within the hole. St. Catherine of Sienna was another one. And there have been many mystics, some of them known, some of them unknown, that have shared these wounds. And it is a way in the authentic cases where Christ has decided to have this particular soul for whatever reason, for his own sovereign reason, to share with him in that experience,

to keep him company, if you will, in that experience of suffering that Christ endured. And those souls that are shared that grace are usually gifted with a tremendous amount of grace to share the suffering, which is not insignificant. You know, Padre Pio had open wounds on his hands, had an open wound on his side. When I say an open wound, I have a bandaging that closed his side. And the bandaging were changed every day. And when it was pulled off of him, it had scabbed. So I have like a giant scab that came from his wound.

Like it would be exactly what you would imagine it would be. the wadding of a thick bandage that closed somebody's side where there was a great big gash. And then at the end of the day, it's pulled off and a new one is pulled on and all of this stuff was saved because of the reputation he had for holiness and the mystical phenomena that dwelt around him. People knew that they were dealing with a saint. His own order knew that. So every day he was assigned a new pair of gloves, for example, and that's why there's an extraordinary. amount of Padre Pio gloves today. So Michael Reality in New York, he has one. Padre Pio's order gifted him one. And it also, it's a brown glove, but if you look at it, there is no question.

There's a great big bloody scab in the palm area of that glove. And so why does God give it? Ultimately, only God knows. But when he gives an extraordinary grace like this, a sharing and the suffering. It's because he has found a soul that he desires to keep him company in an extraordinary way. Wow. And there was an immense amount of skepticism, right, around these wounds to play, quote, devil's advocate and to show the church doesn't just accept these manifestations at face value. There was doubt around it, right? There was a tremendous amount of doubt. There was great opposition because what happens in extraordinary souls like Padre Pio that are given great. grace and the grace was given not for the sake of Pada Pio, but for its evangelical impact

for the sake of evangelization. Now, our lady, Mary, the Blessed Mother, appeared at Fatima in 1917 and she promised an extraordinary amount of grace and she warned of an upcoming war. Now, the Second World War was more than 20 years away, so it wasn't on anybody's mind. and the Great War, the First World War, was at its tail end, but yet she's prophesying this great war that is coming. But she's prophesying that she's got her help. And I am personally of the opinion that Padre Pio, who was such a devotee of the Blessed Mother, was the help that she sent. Because Paterpio was the face of hope during the Second World War. He was what strengthened so many people, not just in Europe, but worldwide.

And he became, in one sense, the face of the Christian faith worldwide. And all of the stories of the mystical phenomena gave people hope that there's this living saint that's out there, God's alive. So in the midst of this horror, in the midst of the bombings, in the midst of the infiltrations, in the midst of the insurrections, in the midst of the arrests, in the midst of the arrest, in the midst of the concentration camps, that God is alive and he's doing extraordinary things in the world. And that gave Europe hope and probably kept it from going over the edge. All right. Father, obviously, Padre Pio has enormous significance when it comes to spiritual warfare.

There's a lot of stories around it. But could you help us understand he wasn't a deputized exorcist, right? He was a priest whom, you might say, the enemy took particular interest in. That's correct. He was not a deputed exorcist. So he wasn't an exorcist in the modern sense of the world and what you and I would think an exorcist to be. But he was an exorcist in the sense that he drove out demons, not through use of the ritual, but just through his sheer holiness. And he did that first and foremost by forming people, by making them turn away from their sin. And that caused them to shake their demons because guess what? pacts that they made, the covenants they made, the agreements that they made, the bonds they forged, they're gone. They've been dissolved through the grace of the sacrament. The demons now have to leave. There's nothing left for them to hold on to. But also, in an extraordinary way, there would be moments where people would fall down and start manifesting in front of Padrepeo. In other words, when they were standing in front of him or with an eye shot, the demons were struck with a terror because there

was something holy within Padre Pio, and so they would begin a manifestation. And so Parder Peele might come and walk in front of that person and trace the sign of the cross, and they would be delivered. And I say might because sometimes he didn't have to do that. He could just pray from a distance. And for all intents and purposes, it looked like holy cow. Like, you know, Mrs. Shephaus just fell on her back and started writhing. She clearly has a demon. Pardipo turned his head towards her. and looked at her for maybe half a second and then just walked away as if nothing was happening. Like, why did he ignore her? And then all of a sudden, she gets up and she's perfectly fine. In other words, he didn't have to do anything overtly.

That the conversation, the dialogue between he and God and he and the devil was of such an astounding nature. That was enough to liberate Mrs. Shephaus. There are father's stories that he would battle demon. routinely and it was attacked himself. There is an anecdote about him being attacked every night in his parents' home. Are you familiar with that story? Oh yeah, very familiar. Yep. So, you know, Padre Pio, he entered the Capuchins in 1903. So at that time, I think, gosh, he was 16 years old, maybe, quite a young man. And he began formation with them. And then four years later in 1907, partly because of poor health, he was allowed to visit and stay with his parents for an

extended period. Now, he wasn't kicked out of the order. They just sent him home. He was a model capuchin. They sent him home for a period of rest to gain his strength back before he went back to the monastery. And this is not an unheard of thing because their lives were very austere. They lived an austere life. And so before making final vows, you know, he was allowed to home, and he would be ordained a priest three years later in 1910, but he was already a friar living the life of a monk. That's the point. So at his parents' house, at 9.30 each night, he was diabolically attacked. So from his room, the family heard cries, screams, and the sound of solid bodies, they would describe hitting the floors as if people were being thrown down

onto the floor. And the poundings would cause the entire house to shape. And the first time that this happened, of course, it obviously startled everyone. And so his family all stormed his room. And what they saw was his furniture strewn about. So his bed was scattered throughout the room. The blankets on top were scattered. The chairs were all upside down. The books were strewn about. The ink wells was tipped over and on the floor, but the ink was strewn all about the walls. And so in the middle of the room, there is Brother Pio just standing still and silent. In the midst of these episodes where the poundings and this diabolical phenomenon was happening, he's standing still.

Now, as soon as they open the door and look at it, like all the movement instantly stopped. So they didn't see the movement, but they saw. the effects of it. And so when he became aware that they had come into his room, you know, he chased them out, he scurried them out, shut the door, and then he slid the bolt. And every night, this happened. And he wouldn't talk about it. They would ask him questions. He would say nothing about it. One day, in fact, so it was already past 9 p.m. And Brother Pia wasn't home. He was visiting the parish priest at the church up the street. And so his father entered his room and just seeing the ink-stained walls, he said, he was struck with a fright and he ran towards the front door.

In other words, like, I got to get out of this house. He was just hit with the creeps. And he just had to get out. But he stopped himself right at the door. And he said, gosh, if I ran outside like this, like a terrified child. The neighbors are going to see, and I'm going to be embarrassed. So he stopped right at the door, and his thought is, you know what, I'm going to wait for my son to come back from visiting the priest. I'm just going to wait right here by the door. And then when he caught sight of his son returning from the church, his father heard a voice from behind him, from inside the house saying, here comes the Holy One. And so when Brother Pio entered the house, The same voice spoke again and said the same thing.

Here comes the Holy One. And Brother Pio just answered, yep, I'm back home. And that was the end of that night's encounter. I mean, he went into his room, slid the bolt, and the diabolical junk happened again. But the thing to note about this is in the saints that wrestled in an extraordinary way with the devil. So Padra Pio certainly did. St. John Vianney certainly did. Catherine of Sienna certainly did.

All of these encounters happened when these folks were young. When they became old men and women, the attack stopped. And the devil didn't hound them anymore. Why? Because by then they were already saints. They were established saints. And in fact, it wounded the devil when he came around. it was actually frustrating for him because when he would launch a diabolical attack,

all he was met with was profound holiness. So in fact, it was counterproductive. The more he attacked them, the more real estate of his kingdom he lost. So he just stopped coming around. Wow. All right. Demonic torment. It's a young man's game.

So, Father, as an exorcist yourself, how do you interpret these assaults on him? And correct me if I'm wrong with, these seem to be. almost similar to Job, where we don't know why at first, but God is allowing these saints to be persecuted in such a way. Is this for refinements? Is this just happening in a broken world? And the demons say, oh, my gosh, look at this future priest with this enormous amount of potential and gift. And they're trying to dislodge them from the trajectory they're on. How do you interpret attacks like this? Yeah. So it's God inviting the individual in question to a very special kind of relationship, a kind of relationship where they are keeping Christ

company, keeping Christ crucified, Christ suffering company. Christ, of course, doesn't suffer any longer. He did at his incarnation, but all of that ended at his resurrection. Christ, it's impossible for him to suffer any longer. Nevertheless, within his mystical, body within the membership of his saints that form that body which he is building. In them, he does suffer. And in fact, St. Paul tells us we make up in our bodies what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. So this is a scandalous thing that Paul said.

What sounds scandalous? What do you mean we make up for what's lacking in the suffering of Christ? Are you telling me that Christ didn't do it all? are you telling me that there's something lacking? And yes, I am, is what Paul is telling us, that there is a suffering he has laid out and apportioned for you and for me. And we make up for it. We make that contribution as members of Christ's mystical body. And so for those who make up for it in a big way, Christ has a portion for them, like he did with Padre Pio, something astounding. And, you know, there's lots of it that we aren't privy to.

Potter Pio and the stigmatists in history, they're embarrassed by it. Potter Pio didn't want to be known for it. He covered up his wounds. He wore gloves. He didn't draw any attention to it. He didn't go on Oprah and hold up his hands. Hey, look at my hands and then try to defend himself out. Look, I'm being so honest.

I'm not proving that here's a doctor who ran tests on me. Here's another doctor. Now, he did have doctors that ran tests on him. It was never his decision. It was never at his doing. He didn't try to shore up his case and to build backers and build fans through an uncompromising integrity. They were imposed upon him these tests by the Vatican. And he cooperated with him at every step of the way.

And even there was at one point where the. He was supervised around the clock. And the testimony is that for over 20 days, he ate nothing but the Eucharist, that there was no other food that entered his mouth for 20 days straight, save the Eucharist, that he consumed when he celebrated mass. Be impossible for a human being to survive like that. But he did. And so this kind of mystical thing, these amazing, extraordinary things,

feats were done at God's behest within Padre Pio. And they drew attention to his character because God had him on a special mission. There was a convincing demeanor and disposition that God wanted to have that all of these signs to have because Padre Pugh had an extraordinary mission of evangelizing not just tens of people or hundreds, but tens of thousands. For our listeners out there who are new to this or just hear this and go, this sounds like a really cruel God. His son is martyred and crucified and that his saints are sent demons to torment them.

There's manifestations of open wounds on them. Could you maybe walk us through a little bit about God's character and how it's compatible with His goodness, these sort of, you know, extra sufferings even. Obviously, we all suffer as humans on this planet and in this life. But when you look at some of these extraordinary manifestations that happen to Padre Pio, who is doing all this incredible work, how would you maybe explain to someone how this is in line with God's good character?

Well, goodness, I wouldn't think that that would be a challenging thing to prove at all. God's son became incarnate to free us from sin. from the pains of death, from sin, sickness, and death. And he encountered an extraordinarily difficult time in doing that. He experienced suffering even unto death. And if God does that to his own son, it should not shock us that he calls all of us to suffering to some extent, but that especially he will call some extraordinarily graceed souls, that he has apportioned out for a particular friendship with him, a special

friendship, and that he's equipping them to handle something extraordinary in terms of suffering for the sake of the salvation of the whole. And this is exactly what he did with Padre Pio. And Father, too, I mean, it's a little different, right? But also, Christ was sent out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan for 40 days. And at the end, it necessitated. angels coming to minister to him. So is that fair to say that's also comparable? It certainly is. And look, why did the father send angels for his son to minister to him? It's because his son was so wounded by his encounter with the devil that he hit the wall. He was non-functional. And so he needed help. He needed the ministry of angels because it took so much

of what he had inside him that he had nothing left. He was obviously. He was obviously. unable to take care of himself. Now, this shouldn't scandalize us, but it shows us two things. The depth of the strength of the enemy, but the profound depth and strength of the sun. And the extent of which he suffered to exert them in order to triumph on our behalf. He didn't need to defeat the devil of his own court. He could have snapped his fingers and the devil's done. He's done.

But he came and he undertook a visible struggle with the enemy in order to not just defeat the enemy, but allow us to have a visual of the depth of his love for us. And we can leave suffering corner here in a minute, but I guess to distill it down, Father, too, for obviously this has plagued many scholars and philosophers over the centuries and thousands of years. But if you distill down just God's allowing us to give. through and suffer these great things, is the main reason to divorce us from confidence in this life and this iteration, or one of the main purposes, I should say, that when we suffer, we are reminded that this is not the final destination? Yeah, absolutely. And if God didn't send us suffering,

we would fall into that illusion. So out of his goodness, he's got to give us suffering so that we don't fall into that trap. All right. Well, that's probably why when you consume two, much of the wrong foods, there are gastrointestinal consequences, lest we eat it all the time, right, Father? I think you would know better than me. All right. Well, let's lighten it up a little bit and go to a superpower that I think some of us wish we had, but we might be actually misunderstanding what it is.

But Father Padre Pio is the only saint I've heard of. Maybe there's others you could educate us on that have allegedly have this power. But could you walk us through the stories of biolocation and just what is bylocation? and why would you be on the side of believing it actually did happen with Padre Pio? Yeah, so biolocation is, gosh, certainly an extraordinary gift, a very rare gift. And what it means is that the individual is at two different physical localities at the same time. Now, we're in the realm of mysticism here. So what that means is we're not in the realm where things make.

sense in the ordinary laws of nature understanding of what enters into common sense. But there are numerous accounts of Padre Pio being at his monastery, which especially during his periods of house arrest, he was there. And he will get into that in a second. Why, and Heaven's name was he under house arrest. But even in times when he wasn't under house arrest, so he's a friar living in a monastery. For him to leave the monastery, to leave the grounds of the monastery, would require permission from his superiors. And yet, there are accounts of him being seen at times hundreds of miles away. There's one account of a German pilot who had orders to drop bombs over a village. And all of a sudden, he sees out in the sky a Franciscan monk with a terrifying

face on him saying, don't you dare do that? And so he turns the plane around. And so there's a repugnance of heart that he feels like, gosh, it was an immoral action that I was asked to do. And I'm glad I didn't do it. And he goes on a pilgrimage to seek out a priest at San Giovanni Rotondo, the town where Padreepio lives. And he actually sees that friar in Padreepio that was in the sky. And he goes up to him. And he said, it is so good for him. for your eternal soul that you didn't do that. In other words, that you didn't drop the bombs, and he just walks away.

So there's no way Padre Pia was up in the sky, and yet this is a count of this soldier. There are other examples. So there's a Monsignor who was at his sister's home. She was in a coma and was dying. And there was another priest who was there anointing her. So the Monsignor is sitting in his living room, and he's waiting for the priest inside to finish.

And then all of a sudden what he sees is Padre Pio and he recognizes him emerging from his sister's bedroom. And he says to her, you know, your sister will be all right. By tomorrow afternoon, she'll be perfectly well. And he walks out. And so he walks into the room and he says to the priest, did you just see Padre Pio? Did you just see a Franciscan monk walk out of here? And the priest looks at him and he says there's been nobody here but your sister. and I. And his sister is now awake. And she says, yes, Padre Pugh was here and we were both

talking. And he showed me the stigmata wounds on his hands and he allowed me to kiss his hands. And so the priest who's been in there with her says, I don't know what the two of you are talking about, but there's been nobody here but myself and you. And he's pointing to the priest's sister. Well, all of a sudden she sits up in bed and sure enough, as was predicted by the following days afternoon, it was nothing wrong with the woman. There was another example. This one was perhaps more of an example of healing than biolocation, but it is held up as a bylocation example. So there was a small boy called Giovannino who lived in Foggia. Foggia is about 30 miles or so from San Giovanni Rotundo. So Giovinino was a

born as a hunchback. He was born with an incredibly and grotesquely twisted spine so that all he could do was crawl and crawl in an awkward tumbling way from place to place. And his father was immensely ashamed of it and every day would tell his wife, don't let him go outside. And every day she would defy him, like, you know, maybe this is the day that God is going to see him. But he was ashamed because his son would crawl and roll about throughout town and he would be the object of ridicule, kids would throw rocks at him and so forth. So one day he's crawling about throughout town and he feels this hand on him and the hand pulls him up and he turns around and he looks at the hand and it's a bloody hand. And it's connected to a friar, a capuchin friar, and it's Padre Pio. And so the kid is healed. he's standing up straight.

So much so that the kid, Juvenino, goes home and starts pounding on the door of his house and his mother answers the door and says, you know, what is it? Can I help you? In other words, she didn't recognize

her own son. And he says, Mom, it's me. It's Juvenino. Padre Pio healed me. And so they had the kid examined by doctors. Now internally, his organs,

were still the way they were, his lungs and, you know, the other internal organs were still kind of in a curved and slightly compressed state, but his spine was perfectly straight like a normal spine would be. And so he lived a normal life after that. And so, you know, Padre Pio was not in fogia. In other words, that is impossible to have occurred in the universe. with the physical laws that it has by which it is bound. It is impossible for Padre Pio to have left the monastery and to be present there, and then to return to the monastery in another instant. So we have to go to another explanation, and what many people have offered is the gift of biolocation,

the grace, the mystical grace of by location whereby God enables certain people to be in simultaneous places at one time. Father, do you wish you had this gift? I wish for only the gifts that God wants me to have and no others. I want nothing more, but I also want nothing less than what he wants me to have because I know that what he has made the decision to be incarnate within me is what is most useful for my salvation and for the salvation of those people in whom he wants me to have. an impact. All right. That's the right answer. Good job. All right, Father, as we wrap up

Miracle Hour, what do you think is the strongest evidence that a lot of this stuff actually happened? Obviously, a lot of myth can surround someone of this popularity, but what do you think is the strongest evidence that a lot of what we're talking about actually happened? Oh, gosh, just the sheer number of claimants. Think about it. Think about it. Let's take a look at this in a sober, rational way. Okay. How many detractors do you think a man like Padreepio would have? How many people do you think might be out there thinking, you know what, this is just so unbelievable. I'm going to go and I'm going to find the evidence that all of this is bogus. How many people do you think may have been like that in history?

And think about it. If that existed, it would have been found, but it hasn't been found. I'm thinking of two modern occasions, you know, and look, I don't mean to get political here, but these are the examples that came to mind. look at the claim during his first term that President Trump had engaged in collusion with Russia. Look how much money was spent in that investigation. So all they had to do was present evidence of it. And there was a great many smart people looking for that.

But guess what? There was never any evidence of any collusion. At the same time, look how many people were trying to establish and prove that President Obama was not born in the United States. States. And they claimed this and that and that and this. But at the end of the day, there was just no solid proof offered. Because if there was solid proof, then that would prevent the man from being president. And every single action that he did as president would be invalid. So look, both of these things, they just didn't exist. And you had an extraordinary manhunt in each case of looking for evidence that was never found.

And the same thing with Pider Peele. Like you could make one heck of a career if you were the guy that cracked the code and you were able to prove that all of this stuff was bogus, that this was a big charade, that the wool was being pulled over your eyes, my eyes, everybody's eyes. You could have made a great career out of that. You would have gotten tremendous notoriety. But all of those people, all of those efforts,

including the Vatican because Potter Pio had his detractors inside the church who thought he was a great big phony. And so the Vatican itself suspended his ministry and said, you know, you're still a priest and you can still celebrate Mass, but you're going to do so privately alone apart from anyone at the monastery and you're not going to present yourself publicly anymore. And that went on for years and Padre Pio obeyed. It heard him. It wounded him. But that's what he did. And people asked him years later, like one Vatican investigator asked us, so what do you do? He says, well, I pray, I read and I play tricks on my brothers here in the house.

He was a great fan of practical jokes. And so even in the midst of this great sad period, he kept up his sense of humor. And so we have somebody here who is very real. And I think the sheer testimony of that, the fact that there are living people, you know, again, this didn't happen eight centuries ago. This happened a mere decades ago. And living people today lived through a great many of Padre Pugh events. They were eyewitnesses and they were beneficiaries. And they offer their testimony.

And the fact that tens and tens of thousands of people are all wrong or are all colluding to lie, that just doesn't make any sense. But we know in God's realm he does call saints. And he calls them and endows some of them with extraordinary mystical gifts. And that's what he did with Padre Pio. And so it was a great gift for us to have a saint like this. And he has given strength to a great many number of people. And it's just a sign that God has taken.

care of us that God is hearing us. And, you know, I'll tell you this. I have a relic of P.O. And I had it at my desk at one time. I was mounting in a new reliquary. And I was doing a project. And I remember at this time I was living in Toronto, Canada. I was chaplain at York University in addition to doing my relic ministry. And there was a petition that I had at the time. There was something for which I was praying. And the relic that was on my desk next to me, in that moment caught my eye. I'd been doing something else. I was writing something.

And I just gave that petition to Piter Pugh, and I said, look, can you please pray for this? And I touched it with my thumb. I touched the window of the relic with my thumb. I tell you, it felt like I had just put my thumb on the flame of a blow torch. So it didn't hurt me

in the sense that it didn't burn my finger, but there was an intensity that was even painful. Like it woke me up. And it was a sign of, hey, I'm here. I hear you. I got this. That's what it told to me. And it fits so well with how Padre Pio lived.

You know, like the guy, he was a guy's guy, loved a good cigar, was not one of these saints that you see on the Holy Card who wears blush and almost looks like maybe he has lipstick, like a holy card saint. You know, there was an account this lady ran up to him one time and ripped some hairs out of his chin to have a relic because she's in front of the famous Pride of Appeal. Well, he just wound up and he clocked her one, smacked her across the face, sent her backwards, and then he just kept walking. Like, you just pulled hair out of my face and you need a smear.

Mac. And that's exactly what he gave her. It's exactly what she got. There's another account where his job was to teach, was to catechize some second graders and prepare them for reception of First Communion. So this is to taking place inside the church. So their teacher brings the class into the church, sits them in the pews. And she goes up to Padre Pio and said, be careful with that guy because he's a troublemaker. And so Padre Pio just wants to, walked out to him and he said, if you make any trouble at all, I'm going to take your head and I'll smash it against the altar. And the kid was the epitome of well-behaved. All right. So he was a guy's guy, just a human being who intensely loved God and lived life intensely, but who could laugh and

enjoyed a good time, enjoyed happiness, mirth, and just lightheartedness. Father, since you are the relic master, and we have mentioned a couple times relics of Padre Pio, have you been in an exorcism where a demon has recognized or given any indication that Padre Pio might be there working on the behalf of the victim in the same way Monsignor, Jim Rattaro mentioned that he had seen demons claim that St. Joseph was present? I sure have. I've seen them show intense aversion and detestation to a relic of Padrepeo when applied. I've never seen one name, Peter Peel, but for that matter,

I've never seen a demon name a particular saint by name anyway. They don't like to do that. They don't like to name names because somebody's name, like your name was the name given at your baptism in the Christian cosmology. And so that's an acknowledgement

of the act by which he was defeated. To name somebody by their first name, the name they've received at baptism, by a demon is to already kind of point to the act that defeated him. So demons don't do that. But I've seen them tremendously rithe and show great aversion, show detestations, show great pain, show great animosity towards a relic of Padre Pio when it is applied to them. Okay.

Well, Father, I thought it might be fitting if we could close with a quote from Padre Pio, of my personal favorites. He says, in the spiritual life, he who does not advance goes backwards. It happens as with a boat which must always go ahead. If it stands still, the wind will blow it back. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, folks, thank you so much for listening. This has been the Padre Pio History Hour with Father Carlos Martins. We look forward to bringing you our next and maybe our last bonus episode. We do have more case files coming on the way. So stay tuned for that. Thanks for listening to folks.

Father, thanks so much for this incredible conversation. Okay, my pleasure. God bless you all.