Padre Pio Miracles S. Giovanni Rotondo
Padre Pio miracles Padre Pio S. Giovanni Rotondo Miracles of Padre Pio cancer Miracles of Padre Pio
Padre Pio miracles S. Giovanni Rotondo : I was born in Maschito ( Italy ), in 1958; a retired nun used to look after me, when my sisters and my mum couldn’t, she was living opposite us; her name was nun Angelina; I was 5 years old, when my mum asked me if I wanted to go to S. Giovanni Rotondo, 150 miles away from our village, with nun Angelina and her, to see Padre Pio, a monk who had stigmata like Jesus Christ and that he was making miracles.
It was September 1963 when we went on pilgrimage on a bus. We went first to La Grotta di S. Michele nearby S. Giovanni Rotondo and then we went to the church where Padre Pio was celebrating the mass.
The church was packed with people coming from everywhere even abroad. I couldn’t see much but I remember Padre Pio’s gloves to hide the stigmata when he was celebrating the mass. When it finished every body went outside. Nun Angelina tried to get near him but Padre Pio made a gesture to her like to say:” Go away from me if you don’t believe in me”. He did it to all the people that where non believers and were there out of curiosity.
My mum and I were on the steps of the church, when Padre Pio appeared outside. The rest of the people were already gone and he was staring at us. My mum said to me:” Look! he is waiting for you, go and say hello to him!”. I was a very shy little girl, his face was very serious and I was scared to be rejected like so many others.
I didn’t go, I tried to hide behind my mum’s skirt. He was still looking at me!
The years went by. At 15 I moved to Northern Italy where my sister Enrica and my brother Vincenzo were living and working to help my parents paying the mortgage; my parents were very poor, had serious illnesses and they fell very behind with the payments; If they had not received help, they would have lost their house and land.
After a few years, in 1981, I decided to go back to my parents, after a major earthquake destroyed a few villages not very far away where my parents lived. I was terrified of losing them .
In the 1983 I started training as a nurse and I completed my studies three years later. I started working: life was beautiful and sweet. Four years later I met Pasquale, an Italian man brought up in England, he asked to marry me after a few days; I told him that he didn’t know anything about me, he replied: “My uncle Nuccio has seen you so many times and when he comes to visit in England, he tells me how good your are. I came to Italy ten years ago to meet you but you were not there: I just saw your picture and I fell in love with you! Please don’ make me wait another ten years!” He was so sweet, completely different from the others boys I had met in my life, I said :”Yes”.
Pasquale went back to England and three months later, my parents and I went to visit him and his family. I was very happy. We planned to get married the next summer.
In April he came back to Italy with his mother for the official engagement. We started preparing for the wedding. Soon after Easter my sister Antonietta told me that mum had something wrong in her tummy. I felt a huge blow in my chest. I started taking my mum to all the doctors I could find, to give her the best treatment possible, hoping it wasn’t cancer. She was admitted in La Casa Della Sofferenza Hospital in S. Giovanni Rotondo, in the hospital that Padre Pio had it built. Three weeks later, soon after the operation, the surgeon Mr Pavone who gave up his lifestyle to follow Padre Pio, called me in a corner and said: I am really sorry, but it is malignant. We hope to have caught it in time!” My hearth stopped, he put his hand on my head and left. I tried to put on a brave face, I didn’t want my mum and my family to find out the terrible news.
I was working 150 miles away from the hospital and every day, between the working shifts, I went to see my mum. On the way back, I went to La Madonna Delle Grazie
Church, where Padre Pio officiated the masses and where I saw him. In there I was crying and praying Padre Pio to take me, instead of my mum whom we all adored: she was only 65 years old and a wonderful mum and wife.
She was told she needed chemotherapy. She asked me: “Am I going to die?” and I used to reply:” Don’t be silly! Doctors think that without chemo you might have another cyst left over at your ovaries”. I tried to fool her and all the family into thinking that it wasn’t so serious, I didn’t want them to suffer.
The wedding date was approaching , and I didn’t have the heart to go ahead with it, the only thought I had in my mind was : I was losing my mum and I could not leave her and go to England . I told Pasquale to postpone the wedding and he seemed to understand the situation. When I told mum, she was very upset, she said:” I have got my life, you get yours!” I was heartbroken but I didn’t want to disappoint her, I had to decide to go ahead with the wedding plan. Mum came back home and she seemed very down, she stayed in bed all day. During the two hour journey to the hospital where I was working, I could not stop crying, sometimes I feared I was losing control of the car I was driving. A month before the wedding, Pasquale’s uncle was taken ill to the hospital. The family had been told they couldn’t do anything for him and they sent him home to die. His family asked me if I could look after him, I couldn’t say no and I went every day for a couple of hours. He died two weeks before the wedding.
Mum had the first chemo, a week before the wedding we had an appointment with the restaurant’s owner to discuss the menu; mum went to take a bath and she called me, she couldn’t untangle her hair. When I went to the bathroom I was completed shocked to see my mum: she had lost most of her hair! We decided to go to the appointment. Everybody was staring at her hair, but my wonderful mum had a sweet smile on her face. The wedding was in a week’s time, mum needed a wig; it was mid august, most of the shops were closed . Finally a hairdresser from Salerno , three hundred miles away, said that she could help us.
In the morning of the wedding day I wasn’t excited; in my mind one only thought: I was leaving my mum and I was terrified of not seeing her alive again!
I moved to England on the 09.09.1989. We have two beautiful children.
Life was hard at times, nobody to turn to in times of crisis. When things went wrong I couldn’t say anything to my family in case my mum knew, she didn’t have to suffer.
Ten years later, one morning I saw a blood stain on my breast, I thought it was a mosquito bite; when I went for a shower I didn’t notice anything wrong. I was putting my pijamas top in the washing machine when I noticed the stain: bloodstain. In the next few days the bloodstain got bigger and bigger, I didn’t know where it came from! I decided to squeeze the nipple: it was bleeding! I started getting very worried. I was a nurse, was it cancer? After a month of asking for an appointment with a consultant, finally my GP called me; according to her many women had the same problem, there was nothing to worry about because I didn’t have the lump! But, I remember clearly the consultant Cappiello’s, when I was training as a nurse saying:” If you see blood from your nipple, run and be checked as quickly as possible!” After a week I had the appointment. Mr Parker held my arm, he looked very worried when he explained what he was going to do: in the same day I had a biopsy and a mammogram done. He said I was going to have a routine surgery, but when I went downstairs to book the date I was told it was going to be in two weeks time!
I had been crying every day since I saw the stain! My kids were only nine and seven years old! If I was going to die who would have looked after them? It was heartbreaking just to thing about it.
On the 14th of.July.1999 I went in for the surgery. The consultant came to see me and said that everything went fine and that I was going to see him the on the 28th of August to have the result of the last biopsy.
In august we were going to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary and because we were going on holiday to Italy , Pasquale decided to stop in Rome for three days. Rome was fantastic, the food delicious, for three days I tried to forget my problem although I had an infection and I was taking antibiotics.
We went to Maschito, where my parents lived. My brother, with his family, was also there and he asked me if I wanted to go to St. Giovanni Rotondo to give blood and to go to church to say thank you to Padre Pio. He did it every year since mum had surgery. I wanted to go too, because the previous year my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary .The ceremony was beautiful and I was very emotional when they took the communion: I was saying thank you to the Madonna Incoronata when a big butterfly flew from her crypt to my head, it went around in a circle on top of all my family members, on top of my parents’ heads near the altar and went back to the statue of the Madonna. I knew what it meant: Padre Pio and all the Saints wanted my mum to stay with us and to enjoy her as long as possible.
It was the second saturday of august when my brother with his wife, Pasquale got in the car and drove to see Padre Pio, it was a two hour journey and it was very hot, so we decided to leave the kids behind.
We waited in a queue at the church, we took the Holy water and while I was making the sign of the cross I felt a terrible pain in the chest: it was like a fist had broken through my ribs cage and got into my heart! I had to sit down, The pain was excruciating , for a few minutes I thought I was having a hearth attack! The mass started, the pain was a bit less intense. When I went to take the communion, I felt a left man’s hand going past my right breast: it was a very powerful hand , Padre Pio’s hand! I dind’t go up to him when I was a child, he came to me to heal me! I knew it was a miracle: the second miracle, first my mum and then me.
We came back to England and the 28th of August I saw the consultant Mr Parker , the biopsy was clear! I knew I was going to be fine.
I started feeling very tired, sometimes I felt like my head was floating in the air, completely detached from the body.
My niece called, she was getting married the 13th of May 2000 and we were invited to the wedding. We booked the flight and went to Como, in Italy , just a few days before the wedding. My mum, my father and my younger sister joined us after a couple of days. We went to the balcony and we heard the car returning from the airport: our mum stepped out of the car and my sister Enrica said:” God, mum has lost weight!” We were so happy to see them all that we didn’t ask questions. The next day Enrica asked my sister if mum was ok and Antonietta said that mum lost weight because she was eating lots of yoghurt! The wedding, although with a small budget, was beautiful. Pasquale played the accordion and another guest played the violin. It was different and special!
In the summer Enrica and Vincenzo went to my parents, in Maschito, and the decided to take my mum to the hospital for a check up: to their horror they had been told that the cancer had spread! My sister took mum to northern Italy , where she lives, in the best hospitals around, the results were all the same: the cancer had spread! We were all in turmoil, we took mum to St. Giovanni Rotondo’s Hospital and they started chemotherapy again, she had it once a month for eight months! Enrica went back an forward to south Italy every twenty days to be with mum when she had treatment. My brother and I helped as we could, Antonietta looked after mum and dad when we were not around and she had a fulltime job as well.
I kept feeling unwell, extremely tired: the house, the kids, the husband, the job, mum’s illness and the frequent trips to Italy were taking their tolls, or so I thought!
One evening, I felt so tired, I drunk a glass of juice: I needed to do some ironing; it nearly killed me, I couldn’t stand up any more and my speech was slurred. The next day I decided to see the doctor; after the blood test and three days later he called me back: I had diabetes! Another big blow! Mum was getting increasingly frail and my father started behaving in a very odd way, the doctor told Antonietta he had Alzheimer’s. Mum was in and out of hospitals; Pasquale and I had a major bust up, I wanted to see my mum and he said no. As a result of the major argument Pasquale had a breakdown. I had only my brother and my sisters to support me, Pasquale got better very slowly and in October we decided to go to Italy. I was devastated to see my mum so frail, my father out of his mind and Antonietta so tired: she looked ten years older! Enrica decided to come to visit as well; it was six o’clock in the evening and she called us saying that she was one hour away from us when mum started coughing: she couldn’t breathe any more: her lips were blue, there was no sign of heart beating. The panic set in: where was Pasquale? I sent Elia calling him in his cousins, in my mind one thought: mum was dying and Enrica was coming home to find a body. I started to resuscitate her, I don’t know for how long, mum came back, the doctors came and they looked at me like to say:” Why did you do that? “ I love my mum, I couldn’t let her go! I was very selfish!
Mum died the 25th of March.2004 at eight o’clock in the morning, when we put her in the coffin the shape of a heart was impressed on her pillow: it stayed there for three days.It was her final I LOVE YOU ALL!
My father died three years later of a broken heart; he completely lost his mind after mum died, he could not bear of being separated from her. He completely dismissed her death saying that she was in hospital with Padre Pio, sometimes he would say: “ Why is she with him and not me? What did I do to her, is she coming back? “
We slowly went back to our normal lives when, a year later, Antonietta called me for advice because she had a lump in her breast. It was cancer! More tears and despair again.
I went to Italy with my children and I asked her if we could go and visit Padre Pio.
His body has been resumed after forty years of his death was on display.
We went, there was a two hours waiting queue; we were waiting in the corridor, I was leaning against a glass cabinet when Antonietta came next to me and said: “I felt an hand on my breast and pulled something out of it, and I can lift my arm up now!” Padre Pio was helping us again! I turned my head and there he was: in the glass cabinet! The statue that Madam Toussaud made of him was incredible! He looked real, in his eyes so much love!
Antonietta had the mastectomy in October 2008 followed by chemotherapy. She has been told she cannot have breast implant because the cancer had infiltrated the muscle, but I know in my heart she has been healed.
I never thought I could deserve his love. Thank you so much St Padre Pio!
Padre Pio miracles Padre Pio S. Giovanni Rotondo Miracles of Padre Pio cancer Miracles of Padre Pio was told by Conenna Maria Carmela