THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO #5 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 5 OF 25

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - WED. MAR. 28/18

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

Preface:

    The 'God is Everything Family' (Padre Pio's Parents and Where They Lived) -  25-28

"Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio, the only child of Fortunato De Nunzio and Maria Giovanna Gagliardi, was a year and a half her husband's senior, born on March 28, 1859. It is said that being of "good family" some of her relatives disapproved of her match with humble Grazio.

    She had light blue eyes and was as tall as her husband.... Like her husband, she was extremely devout. As an act of mortification, she abstained from eating meat on Wednesday and Saturdays, as well as the then-obligatory Fridays.... She prefaced all plans with, "If God is willing." Unlike many residences of small towns, "Zia Beppa" reused to gossip or to criticize people behind their backs. Likewise, those who knew her were struck by her intelligence and her sense of hospitality: "She was happier when she could give than when she could receive.

    "Gra: and "Beppa" were genuinely devoted to each other and to their children. Even by nineteenth-century Italian standards, Beppa was said to have been remarkably submissive to here husband, yet she was independent enough to manage the family alone during the years her husband was absent in America.She and Grad seemed to have been affectionate parents who spared the rod and relied upon the power of persuasion. Padre Pio remembered scoldings but never spankings. ...

    The Forgiones owned another "house" 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. This served as the boy's bedroom. ... The lime-painted walls were adorned with crucifixes and lithographs of the Madonna and saints.  After the children were born, visitors were amazed at the great number of books onto a square table in the parents' bedroom. Although Gra and Bett were unlettered, they were determined that their children would get a good education, and provided for them accordingly. There were eventually eight children.... but on May 25, 1887, a fourth child entered the world and was given the name of his short-lived brother. This was the son who would be known to the world as Padre Pio.  ...

    When the Church bells rang at daybreak, the Forgione family rose for morning prayers. Then Grazio would saddle his donkey and start for the family plot in the area outside town known as the Pianna Romana. ... The Forgione farm was very small, by American standards - only five acres according to some accounts. It yielded grapes, wheat, Indian corn, olives, figs, and plums. Gra and Betta also raised sheep,goats, hens, ducks, rabbits, and occasionally kept a milch cow or two and some hogs... When water was needed, she fetched it from a nearby well in a huge jug, which she balanced on her head. Padre Pio maintained pleasant memories on the farm. ... Winters, the children when they were young, 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, who lived nearby...

   

   Christ was the center of the Forgione family, who were so pious that their neighbors sometimes called them the "God-Is-Everything Family." The family was seen in Church every day, and evenings they knelt together to pray the rosary. The baby sister Graziella, who later became a nun, in later years recalled that in her childhood home, prayer became before anything else... Most of the stories the children were told came from Scripture. ... Of utmost importance to the Forgione family, were the Madonna and the saints, who were seen almost as members of the family.... It was inconceivable to the Forgiones that a Christian could fail to love and honor the Blessed Virgin. It was doubtless from his childhood training that Padre Pio derived his love of the Madonna, whom he was to describe as "more beautiful and more resplendent than the sun ... a most pure crystal that can only reflect God."

George H.Kubeck