“Padre Pio was perfectly aware of the day when he would die. When Padre Pio received the stigmata, Jesus told him something that he never recorded in his letters but which he confided to some of his spiritual children. Realizing that his hands, feet, and side were bleeding, he turned to Jesus and begged him to take away the physical signs: “Let me suffer and let me die from suffering,” he prayed. “But take away these signs that cause me so much embarrassment.” Jesus told him: “You will bear them for fifty years, and then you will see me.” Exactly fifty years later, the wounds disappeared and Padre Pio died.
There are numerous testimonies that prove Padre Pio knew the exact day of his death. In 1967 his niece, Pia Forgione, visited him to ask his prayers for some sensitive family matters. “Within two years I will no longer be here,” he said. “I’ll be dead and a lot of things will change.” The conviction and certainty with which he repeated these words made a deep impression on his niece. She wrote them down and left them on file with Domenico Giuliani, a notary in San Giovanni Rotondo.
A young photographer from San Giovanni Rotondo, Modesto Vinelli, managed to take some photographs of Padre Pio a few months after he had received the stigmata in 1918. The wounds are clearly visible in the photographs, and the photographer was selling copies of these pictures to the faithful. One day something happened when he was in Rodi Garganico. Upon seeing these photos, a man began to swear and blaspheme. He took one of them, tore it up, and trampled on it. Vinelli’s reaction was to kick him and slap him. A violent fight ensued. The blasphemer was hurt, and Vinelli was thrown in jail for forty days. When he was set free, Vinelli went to Padre Pio and told him, “I was sent to jail for defending you.” Then he told him everything that had happened. Padre Pio listened to him and said, “Modesto, we have fifty years ahead of us.”
Vinelli did not understand what he meant. Every year on the twentieth of September, the anniversary of the apparition of the stigmata, Modesto Vinelli would visit Padre Pio to wish him well, and Padre Pio would answer him with the same Sybillic words concerning a certain period of time. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the stigmata, Padre Pio told him: “Modesto, remember that we still have twenty-five years.”
Vinelli was worried. He began to think that Padre Pio’s words referred to the amount of time he had left to live. In 1968, the fiftieth anniversary of the stigmata, Vinelli was extremely anxious. On the morning of September 20, he went as always to see Padre Pio. In a very sad but loving way, Padre Pio said: “Modesto, the fifty years are over.” Vinelli was flabbergasted. A couple of monks had to hold him up because he was shaking so much. Three days later, Padre Pio died. Modesto, however, lived until 1983.
“On September 19, 1968,” Fr. Alberto D’Appolito told me, “I was on the porch of the monastery with Padre Pio and some other monks. A man from Naples arrived with a bouquet of beautiful red roses that he offered to Padre Pio for the fiftieth anniversary of his stigmata, which was going to take place two days later. Padre Pio looked at the roses, took one of them, and gave it to the man. He asked him to take it to the shrine of Our Lady of Pompei. The next day the man went to Pompei and gave the rose to a nun at the shrine, explaining that Padre Pio had sent it for Our Lady. The nun put it in a vase with some other flowers on the altar. On September 23, when that nun heard that Padre Pio had died, she went to the church to pray. Seeing that the flowers in front of Our Lady had died, she was going to throw them out. She was amazed to discover that Padre Pio’s rose was still fresh and fragrant. A year later, when I accompanied another pilgrim to Pompei, I personally saw that rose. It was still fresh in a glass case. Only the stem was a little yellow.”
—From the book Padre Pio: Man of Hope, by Renzo Allegri