After learning about the appearance of the extraterrestrial “Lady” who worked such a mind-bending, scientifically inexplicable miracle in Guadalupe, Mexico, I was hooked on modern miracles and on the prowl to find a more recent mind-blowing miracle attributed to this resurrected Voice.
In the midst of this search, it occurred to me that my recent trouble-making, drug-selling, drop-out self was all of a sudden some tin-foil-hat-wearing believer trying to share stories of miracles with my co-workers. What was happening to me?
Yet, I now realized, the newfound joy of knowing the reality of this resurrected Voice was well worth looking like a tin-foil-hatter. And I felt compelled to devote my time to freely dealing out this miraculous-stuff to whoever was curious.
This search for a modern miracle didn’t disappoint; I ended up discovering someone who you would think was straight out of the mind of Stan Lee. If I was still worried that Jesus was all out of miracle-tricks in his bag since the miraculous tilma was all the way back in 1531, these doubts were nuked by discovering someone overflowing with so many miracles you would have thought he was an alien. And the story is so powerful, it could transform this dude…
into this dude…
This surreal figure named Padre Pio was so unearthly, so extraterrestrial, so filled with superpowers he seemed to have been flown in from planet Krypton. I became fascinated with him and I dove right away into the details of his life.
To my surprise, Padre Pio was… pretty ordinary; he was a spiritual-ape just like the rest of us. Well… sort of. I discovered his original name was Franesco Forgione and was born in Pietrelcina, Italy right in our modern day and age, dying just as the Woodstock festival was ready to rock our hippie family members' clothes off. And this Francesco grew up like any normal teen: loving to wrestle, puffing that first cig as a tween and, of course, causing mischief as a prankster:
Like, for instance, when he and his friend were taking an afternoon siesta in the fields. His friend woke up early, rolled over some musty hay bails, and surrounded his buddy so Pio thought he was buried alive. Needless to say, when he woke up in this hay bail coffin he screamed like a little girl. Tweenage Pio couldn’t let this go unanswered… his newly found post-pubescent manhood was on the line. So he waited for the right moment. And his friend ended up right in his crosshairs: a few days later the same friend was hiding from Pio and while hiding he fell asleep — deep asleep — in a wheelbarrow. Pio seized the moment and, little by little, carefully and quietly dragged him up a massive hill and, of course… just let go. That oughta do it.
Despite being like any other kid in so many ways, it is reported that, at just five years old, he began to experience the not-so-ordinary ecstasies and apparitions of Jesus and the same “Lady” who appeared in Guadalupe, Mexico. And these visions were so frequent that as a young boy he thought they were completely normal. He once asked his friend, rather naively, “You don’t see Jesus?” Uh, no.
The visions were not only of the Voice and this Lady but also of the dark side.
It sounded crazy but it was reported by virtually everyone that lived with him and around him that he was a real-life El. There are numerous reports of neighbors, even those from way down his street, who claimed to be freaked-the-frick-out at hearing “the strangest noises” from Francisco’s house, and even fleeing their homes in the middle of the night because of the fright. Those neighbors would have been even more freaked out if they knew what was really going on. It was as if the Mothergate itself was right in his bedroom, because these dark side demogorgons would appear every night under the most horrible and threatening guises and fight him.
And, in the morning, his mother reportedly “would find his room in complete disorder: everything — the mattress, the chairs, the bed — would be overturned” and his body would be covered in bruises. I couldn’t help but think that same friend must have certainly 💩 himself at that first sleepover… I would have… ‘Uhhh, what was that…’ ‘Buckle up, Billy, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.’
I discovered these dark fights never let up, continuing all throughout his adulthood. When he became a monk, the other monks journaled of deafening noises coming from his room in the evening, which would culminate with a loud bang. They also wrote of times they would run to Padre Pio’s room and find him in bed tormented, covered with spit, bleeding and unable to speak as he fought these scary-ass monsters. The superior of his order once wrote:
“I had hardly gone down more than a step when I heard a deafening explosion. It was the first time I had experienced it and I was shaking from head to toe. I ran into Padre Pio’s room as fast as a shooting star and found him all pale and immersed in a pool of sweat."
And, of course, there were the Hopper-like doubters. Like the time a high-ranking bishop who was passing through and stayed at their monastery. He was told by the superior of the monastery of the extraordinary visions of Jesus and this “Lady” Pio was experiencing and also warned about the upside-down beings that fought him. To which the bishop responded: “The Middle Ages are over. Do you still believe in this nonsense?” “You’ll see,” said the superior. Que the demogorgons. The superior reported about what followed:
“At a certain point during dinner, I heard the characteristic pattering of feet that generally preceded the infamous bang. I told the monks to be quiet. And suddenly we heard the loud bang… The bishop was so terrified that he didn’t want to sleep alone at night. He left first thing in the morning and never returned.”
I found myself thinking that, if this was for real, the evil one and his entourage of demonic spirits that Jesus talked about so much about in John’s Gospel must have been going full UFC on Pio because they knew the sheer amount of people that would be convinced by his life — and by the extraordinary number of scientifically inexplicable, modern-miracles done by the resurrected Voice through Pio.
It was reported The Voice began to work these existence-proving miracles through him as early as a young kid. Those from his hometown, and soon people from the entire region, reported numerous instances of miracles and other inexplicable events that followed the prayers of young Pio. One of the most memorable times is when a plague of lice struck the crops. The townspeople desperately relied on their farming revenue to provide for their families essential needs, and without these crops, they would all starve. So they immediately turned to the prayers of young Pio. Then they reported the following miracle:
“Padre Pio walked through our fields, praying over them and blessing them. All the while the lice fell from the crops with a popping noise. Then other people asked him to pray over their fields, and through Padre Pio’s prayers the insects were destroyed everywhere. Within a week all the crops were free from infestation.”
Yet, I was still not ready to buy it fully: if it was only rumors, it could be chalked up to a hyper-religious and often superstitious small town playing the good ol’ game of telephone.
But something would soon happen to him that would defy the understanding of even the most sophisticated scientists and put this miracle-worker on the world stage.
It's called the stigmata.
The Next Article: Aftermath: The Stigmata
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