HEIR OF PADRE PIO

 

This week we celebrate the feast of St. Padre Pio and it is no coincidence that an Italian archbishop has opened the cause for beatification of a Capuchin friar and spiritual son of St. Padre Pio.

In 1944, the future FRA MODESTINO, born in 1917 to farmers in the area of  Pietrelcina, went to San Giovanni Rotondo and spent two weeks with Padre Pio.

  

He confided to him that, during his military service in Rome, he had often gone to pray in the church of St Frances of Rome, where he had developed an ancient religious vocation and had decided to enter a Benedictine community in the capital. Padre Pio replied that the Lord was not calling him to serve him in the Benedictine Order, and faced with the insistence of the young man from Pietrelcina, he said: “If you want to go to Rome, go. But a very ugly disaster has been reserved for you ”.

Three years later, in fact, that abbey was stormed by some young robbers who entered through the window and, to take possession of 15,000 lire, stabbed the abbot to death under the eyes of his lay brother and left the latter tied up and gagged. By the time the rescuers arrived, he was dead. “That fate, said Fra Modestino, was reserved for me”.

 Then Padre Pio ordered him to return home and move for some time to San Giovanni Rotondo. He stayed there for a whole year. Thus he had the opportunity to know the intimate relationship that bound the Friar to the Lord and decided to become a Capuchin too. At the moment Padre Pio welcomed the news with an exhortation: "Paesano (countryman), do not make me look bad!". 

Fra Modestino was a Capuchin who lived for 28 years alongside Padre Pio. Every day he welcomed hundreds and hundreds of pilgrims, who spoke with him, for a prayer of intercession and for a particular blessing precisely with the imposition of the crucifix of Padre Pio on the forehead.  Padre Pio gave him that crucifix making him responsible to carry in his mission. He also wore a Padre Pio glove, which  pilgrims touched. Padre Modestino was said to be the heir of Padre Pio.

Friar Modestino was also a witness in the cause for the beatification of Padre Pio.

 He died in  at the age of 94 in 2011.