With a Little Help From Padre Pio

I don’t remember why, exactly, I’d started searching for Catholic shrines to visit, but I do know that the first time we made the trip out to the National Centre for Padre Pio in Barto, Pennsylvania was the day after Easter in 2016. I didn’t know it then, but the Italian saint was about to lead my family through its worst trial yet.

Meeting Padre Pio

As luck would have it, the shrine was only about 45 minutes from our home. It was a chilly spring day when we first stepped onto the campus with its pristine white buildings, gentle rolling hills, and neatly manicured lawn. My husband, the three kids and I all felt a certain peacefulness strolling around the grounds.

Prior to our visit, all I had known of the saint was that old Italian ladies loved him, and that he always looked so dolorous in the pictures they hung of him in their homes.

What we learned during our visit was that he indeed suffered for his entire life, being a sickly child who would later bear the wounds of Christ in the miraculous stigmata that would mark his body for life.

According to the shrine’s website, the family built the Centre as a way to educate people about St. Padre Pio in their gratitude for the miraculous cure of their daughter, Vera Marie Calandra.

The day of our first visit, after spending time in their museum, chapel, and gift shop, we resolved to come back again, knowing that peace and a silent encounter with the divine would await us.

The Day Our Lives Fell Apart

August 1, 2016 will forever be marked by the tragedies that unfolded in our family that day.

Our son, who was just shy of his third birthday, was admitted to the hospital for dangerously low blood counts after a visit to the pediatrician for peculiar bruising.

That same night, while I dozed in the recliner next to my son’s metal hospital crib, I got the call that my mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly.

In God’s divine plan, St. Padre Pio, whom we had just “met,” was already leading us through both my son’s illness and my mother’s death.

Hope in a Time of Despair

By the time we made it back to the shrine, our son had been diagnosed with very severe aplastic anemia, a rare form of bone marrow failure that results in dangerously low immune, red blood, and clotting cells.

While waiting for treatment options (they weren’t sure if he would have a bone marrow transplant or drug therapy), we made our pilgrimage to the place we knew we could find peace and prayer.

This time we brought my father, who was disabled by a massive stroke in 2008 and had moved in with us after my mother passed away.

We all venerated Padre Pio’s blood-soaked glove they bring out for the pilgrims who request it.

I prayed for the repose of my mother’s soul and I pleaded –begged– for our little boy’s life to be spared.

The shrine which had previously been a nice day out to commune with God became a vital refuge from the tumultuous storm raging in our lives. We did our best to cling to Padre Pio’s simple advice, “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

A Sick Little Boy

The only permanent cure for his disease is a bone marrow transplant, but since neither of his sisters were a match (they do match each other, however), his doctors opted for drug therapy, which only had a 40% success rate at putting kids into remission.

The regimen is so virulent, it requires hospitalization during the course of treatment, so our son was admitted to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for 9 days in October 2016.

Padre Pio came with us in the form of a small statue, relic, and some other holy items we’d purchased from the Centre’s gift shop which we laid out in a makeshift shrine in his hospital room.

The items were a comfort during the long, lonely nights. In retrospect, I can see so clearly that it was Padre Pio, and the help of many other prayer warriors near and far, that brought my son, and our whole family, through the worst of it.

Connected by Blood

One of the scariest hallmarks of our son’s disease was spontaneous bleeding. Some mornings, when he needed a transfusion of platelets, he would wake up covered in his own blood. He was scared, and my husband and I never felt more helpless than in those times.

We weren’t too sure how much of this was sinking in since my son was still so little, but during a trip some time later to the National Centre for Padre Pio, a particular image gave us a glimpse of the depth of his experience.

In one of the chapels, there is a crucifix featuring a very bloody depiction of Jesus on the cross. Although only a preschooler, my son was mesmerized by that image, his eyes moving from bloody wound to bloody wound. He kept asking me about our Lord’s blood.

I told him about the sacrifice Jesus gave us with his blood, and how sometimes he asks special people to suffer just as he did. I told him how God chose him to be one of those special people because of all he went through.

I didn’t know how much of my words really sank in, but I could see he made a connection with Jesus through his wounds in a way many of us would never understand.

Our Prayers Are Answered

After what seemed like forever, my son slowly started to get better. There were setbacks and scary moments for sure, but each day moved him towards a more normal life.

When he was finally well enough, we attended the Exposition of Relics of Saints and Martyrs event at the National Centre for Padre Pio in August 2017.

During the exposition, many saints’ reliquaries were set up for personal veneration. As we made our way through the exhibit, we made sure to have our son hold particular relics while we prayed over him, such as St. Philomena. Although young, he seemed to possess a certain innate sense of reverence as he held each one.

That day, I made a silent petition to St. Therese the “Little Flower,” and like many people do, I asked that she send me a rose as a sign. I asked that it not be a rose bush, or a bouquet of roses, but some undeniable sign that it was from her.

As we were leaving the building, a man we’d never met picked up a rose off the table near St. Therese and handed it to me. I burst into tears, so grateful for a clear answer.

About a year later, with our son solidly on the road to recovery, that same man, who turned out to be a volunteer at the center, remembered us and approached me.

He told us how he’d never done anything like that before, and didn’t even know why he had to give me that rose, but just that he did. We told him our family’s full story, about what I had asked from St. Therese that day and how I’d asked for an undeniable sign, and we all marveled at the small miracle we’d been a part of because of her and Padre Pio.

As we always did, we ended our visit with a trip to the gift shop. Our son picked out a statue of Our Lady of the Rosary. Our new friend from the shrine surprised us by buying it for him, and that statue sits prominently on our family’s prayer table.

A Special Anniversary

This year marks four years since my son became ill and one year since he was officially done with his drug therapy and considered in remission.

With so much time passed, mother has been gone for more than half of my son’s life and my father now resides in a nursing home, but we still have so much to celebrate.

When we think about the National Centre for Padre Pio, we remember the place where God’s divine grace and human kindness came together so seamlessly..

We will never forget all that Padre Pio and the people who keep his memory alive had done to help our family through that time.

We haven’t been back since before COVID-19, but we know that next time we visit, we’ll be welcomed by the many kind volunteers and our new favorite saint.