THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 4 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 4 OF 25

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM- SUN. MAR. 18/18

  From the book, "Padre Pio: The True Story (Revised and Expanded) by C. Bernard Ruffin), Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1991, Huntington, Indiana, 46750

Preface:

 The 'God Is Everything Family' (Padre Pio's Parents and Where They Lived) - 21-25

"Pietrelcina, a village of about four thousand souls, lies about six miles northeast of the of Benevento, which gives its name to the province in a region of southern Italy known as Campania. Over the years, Pietrelcina, which grew up around a premedieval castle, has been called Petrapolcina, Petrapolicina, ... and only since the eighteenth century, Pietra Elcina or Pietrelcina. Nobody knows for sure what the name means, although some local scholars think it means either Little Rock or Oak Rock....

   The census returns of 1881 revealed that out of every one thousand inhabitants, there were only forty-six sharecroppers and only fifty-nine peasant proprietors. Moat of the people were landless peasants, employed seasonally as farm laborers, who lived from hand to mouth. These people subsisted largely on a vegetarian diet of rice, bread, pasta, and cornmeal, and were generally so unhealthy that few of their young men were found fit for military service. Malaria, pellagra, and tuberculosis were endemic, child mortality was astronomical, and every few thousands of people died in epidemics of cholera.

    Pietrelcina was in many ways was typical of the region. The village was isolated, two miles from the nearest railroad, which was its only communication with the outside world, as there were no roads, not even to Benevento...The day at Pietrelcina was punctuated by the striking of the church bell marking the various periods of prayer specified by local devotion. The year was highlighted by numerous saints' days. Few towns in the region observed so many religious feasts as Pietrelcina....The Pulcinari (as the inhabitants f Pietrelcina were called) celebrated the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel on April 8, walking to the nearby village of Torre, five miles away, to make their confessions, hear Mass, then eat, drink, and enjoy the performance of local bands, gathering flowers, as they returned home to strew over the statue of the archangel in the  parish church of Pietrelcina. Devotion to Mary was especially strong in Pietrelcina....

    The deep piety of the world in which Padre Pio passed his  boyhood was also shot through with superstition. People spoke of a special prayer or combination of prayers, which, if repeated in a certain way, would enable one to predict the day of his death....  A resident of Pietrelcina, who as a slightly younger contemporary of Padre Pio, described her town: "It was all farms in Pietrelcina. For us, Benevento was the big city. That's all we knew. We dressed like people in America. We did not have arranged marriages. We didn't wear local costumes [Except on special occasions] but all our clothing was handmade. We never closed our doors. We had not running water or plumbing.

    Grazio Maria  Forgione was the father of Padre Pio. Born on October 22, 1860, he spent most of his childhood in the household of his steofather Celestino Orlando, who married his mother shortly after the death of Michele. Although he was baptized Grazio, Padre Pio's father was known most of his life as Orazio. As we shall see, Forgione spent many years working in America, and it was there he learned to sign his name....

  On June 8, 1881, Grazio Forgione, now twenty years old donned the local costume - a double trimmed with gold buttons, knee stockings adorned with white ribbons, and white shoes, and was escorted by his step-father to the home of Maria Giuseppa De Nuncio, who was to be his bride...

Thus did Grazio Forgione and Giuseppa De Nuncio commence their 48 years of married life....

    In a society in which men typically went to Mass only at Easter, and possibly at Christmas, and at other times stood outside the church chatting while their wives worshiped, Forgione not only went ot Mass every Sunday, but with his wife, stopped at the church to pray after working in the field. He is remembered as constantly praying the rosary, yet another habit he instilled in his famous son. Not an oath or a foul word ever escaped his lips, and so great was a reverence for life did he have that even in the fields he would step out of the way of an ant rather than step on it. "Poor little creature, why should it die?" ... George H. Kubeck