THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE # 6 OF 25
VERITAS - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - EASTER SAT. MAR. 31/18
From the book, "Padre Pio: The True Story (Revised and Expanded) by C. Bernard Ruffin)," Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Indiana, 46750
Chapter 2: "IL Bello Francesco" 29-33
"Nobody was very much interested in preserving the details of the childhood of the farm boy who became Padre Pio until he was widely regarded as saint.... According to relatives and neighbors, Franci was an unusually beautiful baby, and as a little boy, with blond hair and brown eyes, "he was so beautiful he looked like an angel." Neighbors referred to him as "il bello Francesco"("beautiful Francis"), as much for his temperament as his appearance. ...
Contrary to popular belief, Franci, as a child, enjoyed normal health. When he was two, however, he suffered from stomach problems his mother took him to the local witch, fearing that someone had put the "evil eye" on the child. The witch, according to Padre Pio, "took me by the legs and held me upside down {as if} I were a lamb," making nine crosses over his stomach, massaging it, and chanting weird formulae. The treatment seemed to work....
Pietrelcina offered but three years of schooling in the 1890s. Classes were held at night so that the children could work during the day. Michele never liked school, but Francesco was an eager student. His first teacher was Cosimo Scocca, a fourteen-year-old boy from the next farm. The next two years, Franci was instructed by Mandato Saginario, who worked by day as a rope-maker.... At baptism Beppa dedicated Franci (a she probably did the other children) to Christ and to the Virgin Mary. Then, when he was five,m she encouraged him to dedicate himself to his Lord, tok the Blessed Mother, as well as to his patron saint, Francis of Assisi. Some recall the Mammella Forgione had a wall placard made showing a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, beneath which was written the date on which each of her children made a personal commitment to the Lord.
So Franci Forgione eagerly appropriately the religious values instilled in by his parents. From the time he could walk, he was always asking to be taken to church. He liked to hear stories about Christ, Mary and the saints, and he was precociously aware of sin. One day when he was a very little boy, he was walking with his mother past a field of turnips. When Mammella remarked, "Look at those beautiful turnips. I'd sure like to eat some," Franci, with grave and solemn demeanor, looked up at her and said sternly, "That's a sin." A few days later, however, when mother and son were walking past a stand of fig trees, Franci begged his mother to pluck some figs. "Wait a minute now," she said. "It was a sin to eat the turnips, now it's a sin to eat the figs!" ...
The reaction of the Forgione children was, in fact, one instilled by their mother, who insisted that they immediately leave the company of any child who cursed or swore. In fact, whenever Giuseppa heard anyone blaspheme, she would "repair" it with the expression, "Blest be God!"a practice she tried to instill in all her children. ... The young Forgione early revealed a deep concern for the poor and sick.... he accompanied his mother on one of her frequent errands of charity and saw poor peasants without adequate food, clothing, and shelter.
When Franci was eight, he witnessed an event that remained indelibly imprinted in his mind for the rest of his life ... On this day, August 25, 1895, Franci and Tata witnessed a spectacle equally tasteless but with unforgetable results. Crowded into the Church of St. Pellegrino, ... Franci and his father, along with other worshippers, were startled by the piercing shrieks of a "raging, disheveled woman" who forced herself up to the altar where the statue of the martyred bishop (St. Pellegrino) stood. In her arms, the woman held her deformed and retarded son, who ceaselessly emitted a horrible, raucous sound that resembled the graaak of a crow. Hysterical the mother implored the saint to heal her child.
When nothing happened and the child, his huge deformed head hanging listlessly, continued his obscene and pathetic litany - "Graak! Graak! Graak!" - the mother, with bloodcurling shriek and with gruesome oaths, began to curse the saint, finally shrieking, "Why don't you cure him? Well keep him he is yours!" With that she threw the child at the statue. He hit the image, bounced off, and crashed to the floor. Then to everyone's stupefaction, the child, who had never walked or talked before, got up and ran to his mother, crying, in a clear and normal voice, "Mother! Mother!" ...
Happy Easter, George Kubeck
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