The Saint Who Bilocated to Be With the Dying
Padre Pio never left his monastery.
From 1918 until his death in 1968, he lived inside a small friary in San Giovanni Rotondo, a hilltop town in southern Italy. He did not travel. He did not seek medical care outside its walls. For fifty years, the world came to him — thousands of people lining up daily for confession, for a blessing, for a glimpse of the friar who bore the wounds of Christ on his hands and feet.
And yet, across Italy and beyond, people reported seeing him somewhere else entirely.
In the hospital rooms of the dying. At bedsides hundreds of miles away. In places he had never physically been.
The First Account
The earliest recorded instance dates to January 18, 1905. Padre Pio was seventeen years old, a Capuchin student praying in the choir loft at his friary in Sant’Elia a Pianisi. It was eleven o’clock at night. Within three weeks, he wrote down what had happened and handed the account to his superiors.
That same night, 350 miles away in Udine, a woman named Leonilde knelt at her dying husband’s bedside, praying for his conversion. She saw a young Capuchin friar appear over his bed, then walk out and disappear down the corridor. Her husband died that night, at peace. In the same house, she went into early labor and gave birth to a daughter.
The Virgin Mary, Padre Pio wrote, had appeared to him during the bilocation and entrusted the child to his care. He would not meet her in person until years later — just as Mary had told him he would.
His Own Words
For most of his life, Padre Pio said nothing about bilocation. Every account came from the people who experienced it. It was only under direct questioning from Vatican investigators that he spoke of it at all.
“I don’t know how it is or the nature of this phenomenon,” he said, “but it did happen to me to be in the presence of this or that person, to be in this or that place. Usually it happened while I was praying.”
He offered no explanation. He did not seem particularly interested in providing one.
The Last Goodbye
The final known bilocation occurred on September 22, 1968 — the day before Padre Pio died.
A fellow friar, Padre Umile, was bedridden in Genova following a bad fall. That afternoon, a nurse entered his room and noticed it was filled with the scent of flowers. Padre Umile told her that Padre Pio had come to say goodbye.
Padre Pio died in the early hours of September 23.
A Life Given Over
The Capuchin Franciscan tradition has always understood that holiness is not confined to one place. In Padre Pio’s case, that seemed to be literally true.
Padre Pio, Capuchin friar and saint, pray for us.
Learn more about the Capuchin Franciscans at CapuchinsWest.org
