# 41 OF 45 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

# 41 OF 45 THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - BLOGGER George H. Kubeck, TUES. FEB 25, 2020

 

Padre Pio - The True Story - C. Bernard  Ruffin

Chapter 18 - L' Americana p. 209 -217

    "Padre Pio was concerned not only for the souls of humanity, but, as we have seen, for the bodies as well. This interest was further demonstrated by his determination to establish a hospital at San Giovanni Rotondo.... St. Francis is Hospital was a start but did not satisfy Padre Pio who wanted a first-class hospital for San Giovanni. That dream would be defeated for two decades.

 

    For many years Pio had desired a Capuchin presence in his hometown. In fact, shortly after his ordination in 1910, as he and Don Salvatore Pannullo were returning to town from the cemetery, Padre Pio pointed to an open field and asked the archpriest, "Don't you smell a fragrance of incense? Don't you hear the singing of angels?"..."Some day there will rise a friary with a church here... the words were fulfilled in June 1926, when work began on a friary, church, and boarding school in Pietrelcina.

 

    This came about through the generosity of one of Padre Pio's most spiritual children who made her appearance in San Giovanni in October 1923. For more than four decades Adelia Maria McAlpin Pyle who would be a fixture a San Giovanni Rotondo and a "strong arm" of Padre Pio.... After several several years of travel with Montessori, Maria Pyle was still restless. After reading a book called Self Abandonment to the Divine Will by one Father Caussade, she began to ask herself, "Why can't I have a spiritual director like Father Caussade? and began a search for a holy man to direct her life.

 

    Sometime in the early 1920s, Maria became aware of Padre Pio, but, as she wrote in a short in a short memoir years later, "I did not want to see him out of mere curiosity. I believed in him, and in my state of lethargy, that seemed to me to be sufficient."...

    Padre Pio had a tremendous effect on both women. Rina was a Romanian married to Nestor Caterinici, who had been a colonel in the army of the murdered czar of Russia. For many years she had been disenchanted with Eastern Orthodoxy. She professed to be "with a true sense of mysticism" because "the Orthodox religion kept dogmas like those which the Catholic religion has, but in practice, the priests never seemed convinced that we receive the living Jesus in Holy Communion," and because Orthodox "confession is nothing but a formality that frees the spirit neither from oppression nor evil....

 

    He handed her a little catechism and showed her various prayers she needed to learn. "Do I have to prepare myself by taking instructions? she asked. Pio answered, "It's necessary to love, love, and nothing more." Both Rino and her husband Nestor became Roman Catholic. As for Maria, she knew at once that in Padre Pio she had found her spiritual director...Pyle returned to Capri, rejoined Montessori, and accompanied her to England and Holland. There she told Montessor, "There is a living saint in this world and it saddens me not to be near him. I want to return there, and it would please me greatly if you would accompany me." ... Maria Pyle at first wondered whether Padre Pio would direct her to the convent. As she later told a relative, "I didn't want to be a nun. I don't like to take orders from anyone."...

 

    Maria Pyle soon endeared herself to everyone she met. Although she was close to forty, she retained the radiant beauty of her youth... A companion said, "Generally, she was happy, with a smile constantly on her lips, having a good word for everyone."....One day, shortly after she settled into her home near the monastery, Maria Pyle asked Padre Pio. "Can I build a friary at Pietrelcina?" Without batting an eye, Pio told her she could. "Do it at once and let it be dedicated to the Holy Family....

 

    A few days later, Luigi Cardinal Lavitrano, the archbishop of Benevento, stopped to see the construction and bless the cornerstone... Soon another problem developed. There was no water. When Padre Pio was apprized of this, he described a certain location and told the laborers to dig there...,. a large spring was found.

George H. Kubeck