Francesco Forgione, known as Padre Pio, born on May 25, 1887 in Pietrelcina, and died on september 23, 1968.
He was nine years younger than Gemma Galgani, born on March 12, 1878 in Camigliano, a fraction of Capannori near Lucca, and died in Lucca on April 11, 1903.
Padre Pio, already at the age of five, began to experience the first supernatural phenomena and, during his novitiate (1903-1904), fully experienced a profound mystical experience. The similarities between his experiences and those of Gemma led him to recognize in her a spiritual reference point capable of helping him understand what he was living. Gemma Galgani also had her first mystical experiences at a young age, around seven years old. Both would have the mission of suffering for the conversion of sinners.
Like Gemma, Padre Pio also had to face the devil and lived intense celestial experiences, characterized by revelations, angelic presences and apparitions of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The guardian angel played an important role in the mystical experience of both, because it was the guardian angels who brought letters and messages, and from them they received illuminations and instructions that helped them understand God’s will.
Identifying with Gemma
When Padre Pio went through the painful experience of the stigmata, initially invisible for almost eight years and then manifesting themselves in an evident way, he fully recognized himself in Gemma’s exceptional mystical experiences. In many of his letters (about 50), phrases and expressions typical of Saint Gemma’s language can be found, taken from her letters, diary and writings. That Padre Pio had read and deepened Gemma Galgani’s writings is confirmed in a letter to Father Benedetto on May 2, 1921:
“I also come to ask you for a charity: I would like to read the booklet entitled Letters and Ecstasies of the Servant of God Gemma Galgani, together with the other one of the same Servant of God, entitled The Holy Hour. Sure that, finding this desire of mine just, you will procure them for me. I salute you and ask for your blessing. Your brother Pio.”
Even more strikingly, in ten letters, Padre Pio almost completely copied the text of Saint Gemma, identifying himself spiritually in the same path of faith.
The Spiritual Link Between Padre Pio and Gemma
Padre Pio recommended devotion to Gemma to many of his spiritual children, whom he called “The Great Saint”. We have testimonies that not only did Padre Pio pray to Saint Gemma Galgani every day, but that he also had apparitions of the deceased Saint not many years after her death.
Both desired a normal life, but had extraordinary experiences.
Gemma wrote to Father Germano: “I pray a lot, you know, that Jesus may put me on an ordinary path and I want this grace because it seems to me that things are beginning to be known.”
Padre Pio wrote to Father Benedetto: “You know, Father, I don’t attribute any importance to my extraordinary state and for this reason I don’t cease to ask Jesus to lead me through the ordinary way of all souls.”
Both had similar experiences of burning pain in the chest, which they explained as the fire of God’s love consuming them, and they suffered greatly because of their sisters: Padre Pio suffered for his sister Pellegrina, while Gemma suffered for her sister Angelina.
The Stigmata and Canonization
Both Saint Gemma and Saint Padre Pio, canonized by the Catholic Church, lived the stigmatization, the sign of the Passion of Jesus Christ, with wounds on their hands, feet, side and marks of the scourging, the crown of thorns and the sweating of blood. We can say that their closeness was a true experience of Communion of Saints.
