Pray with us the same nine days when the Capuchin friars pray this novena before the body of Saint Padre Pio, in San Giovanni Rotondo: the prayer Stay with me, Lord, the Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that the saint himself recited every day, the day’s proper prayer from the Prayer Groups he founded, the day’s Scripture and the Way of the Day — on video and in a free companion book.
The Capuchin friars pray this novena in San Giovanni Rotondo, before the relic of the saint’s body — exactly our nine days.
Francesco Forgione was born poor on May 25, 1887, in a village in the province of Benevento, Italy. So his son could study, the father crossed the ocean to work in Argentina, while the mother kept the household running in the fields. At sixteen he entered the Capuchin novitiate and took the name Friar Pio; he was ordained a priest in 1910, and in 1916 he arrived, to stay, at the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo — he would spend the next fifty-two years of his life there.
On September 20, 1918, in the thanksgiving after Mass, the stigmata appeared on him: the wounds of Christ’s Passion, which stayed open for fifty years. What followed was not glory, it was suspicion — years of restrictions, and between 1931 and 1933 he was forbidden to hear confessions or celebrate Mass before the people. He obeyed the whole time, without a single public complaint.
Returned to ministry, he began hearing confessions from morning to night for lines that crossed the square, and built, with no money at all, a hospital: the Home for the Relief of Suffering, opened in 1956. He also founded the Prayer Groups, present today in eighty countries — fifty-two of them in Brazil. He died on September 23, 1968, rosary in hand, saying two words: "Jesus, Mary." He was canonized in 2002.
Each of the nine days has a video with the whole novena: the prayer Stay with me, Lord, the Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the day’s proper prayer, the Word of God, a passage from the saint’s letters — always cited by volume and page of the Epistolario — and the Way of the Day. On the first day you choose the grace you’ll ask for; the companion book in PDF carries the whole novena, with a QR code for each day that leads straight to the video.
“May the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, enlighten us ever more about the immensity of the eternal inheritance to which we have been destined by the goodness of our Heavenly Father.”
It is with a passage like this one — always cited by the volume and page of the Epistolario, the collection of Padre Pio’s letters — that the meditation of one of the nine days opens. In the same letter he writes that the penetration of our spirit into this mystery distances the soul from earthly things: it isn’t contempt for the world, it’s proportion — whoever has seen the size of the inheritance stops fighting over crumbs. In the book you’ll find the full text of every letter quoted, with the exact reference.
Not just a prayer to repeat: it is a nine-day journey with the friar who carried the wounds of Christ for fifty years.
Stay with me, Lord, the Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the day’s proper prayer — with the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be in full, nothing cut.
Each day is a real episode of his life: the poor childhood, the vocation, the stigmata, the confessional, the hospital he built, all the way to the dawn of his death.
In its first pages, the book sets out the research into the sources: what comes from the Sanctuary, what comes from the Prayer Groups he founded, and what is our own translation.
A video with the complete novena each day and the novena book in PDF, with a QR code — made to be printed and prayed in a group.
"Novena to Saint Padre Pio" — the same complete novena, the nine days, the Novena Prayer and the detachable Prayer Notebook — also on Kindle and in paperback, on Amazon.
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