Pietrelcina (BN), church of Santa Maria degli Angeli

2017

Santa Maria degli Angeli, parish church of Pietrelcina, preserves the polychrome wooden statue of the Neapolitan school of the end of the seventeenth century depicting the Madonna della Libera, patron saint of Pietrelcina, which Padre Pio affectionately calls "our Madonnella". In this church Fra Pio began his apostolate and, having obtained the diaconate, he administered the first baptism to a child who later became a Redemptorist priest. In this regard it is said that Padre Pio put so much salt, that the newborn, opening his little mouth, squinted his eyes - "smerzava l`uocchie" - words of Brother Pio, who frightened ran to the archpriest Don Salvatore Pannullo, saying: " I killed the child ”. On the eve of the solemnity of the Assumption, on 14 August 1910, four days after being ordained a priest, Padre Pio celebrated his first mass. A few days later he wrote to Father Benedetto of San Marco in Lamis: "For several days I was a little sick; perhaps the main cause of this was the too much emotion to which the spirit has been subject in these days… my heart is overflowing with joy and it feels stronger and stronger to encounter any affliction, when it comes to pleasing Jesus ”. In this church Padre Pio had interminable moments of prayer and intimacy with God, ecstasy at the foot of the altar, and the mystical phenomenon of the fusion of hearts: "The heart of Jesus and mine, allow me the expression, were no longer two hearts that beat, but only one. My heart was gone, like a drop of water that gets lost in the sea ”. And again: "I feel everything burn without fire ... a thousand flames consume me, I feel I am dying continuously and still alive". Padre Pio celebrated masses in this church that were "too long" and "incomprehensible mystery" so much so that the guardian father had asked the parish priest to recall him in his mind, because in this way he would immediately obey him out of holy obedience.

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