PRAYING WITH PADRE PIO

by Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti

Word Among Us Press, 2007

166 pages, $12.95

To order: bookstore.wau.org

1-800-775-9673

“Praying With Padre Pio” is the fourth book by Eileen Dunn Bertanzetti about the Italian monk.

Bertanzetti shares some of her great store of knowledge about the saint and relays some of his trials. She claims for St. Pio of Pietrelcina a childlike faith that was suffused with intense suffering, not only from the excruciating stigmata he endured for most of his life but also from false accusations and self-doubt.

“Any really great mystic will go through the dark night of the soul,” Bertanzetti said. “But the suffering also strengthens them.”

For all that kind of insight, this book is not a biography.

The author uses examples of St. Pio’s spirituality to guide the reader into a series of 15 meditations on humility, obedience, trust and love — the bases of his sanctity.

Readers who want to follow the meditation format recite an opening prayer — penned by Bertanzetti — and read a passage about St. Pio that reflects on this topic.

So, Meditation 10, for instance, is “the holy angels smile at us,” and we learn that the Capuchin felt his guardian angel protecting him. That’s the kind of insider information that adds enchantment to the book.

The prayers are mostly intercessory, and I think the book would have benefited from praise and gratitude voiced also. This may be kvetching — because Bertanzetti’s own prayers are good — but I’d like to have seen some of the famously eloquent prayers by the likes of the psalmists or Sts. Bonaventure or Aquinas.

Bertanzetti said that each meditation is self-contained, but that if a reader works his way through the entire book — all 15 meditations — he will know about most of St. Pio’s life.

Bertanzetti did not know the saint, who died in 1968. She did most of her research at the National Center for Padre Pio in Barto, Pa., a shrine and museum that contains three full volumes of his letters.

Readers could learn about him through Bertanzetti’s simple, clear prose. The following passage is from Meditation 10:

“Padre Pio’s guardian angel rescued him countless times from the assaults of the devil and other evil spirits. On Nov. 5, 1912, Padre Pio wrote to his friend, Father Agostino Daniele, ‘I cannot tell you the way these scoundrels beat me. Sometimes I feel I am about to die. … I turned to my guardian angel and … there he was, hovering close to me, singing hymns to the divine Majesty in his angelic voice.’”

St. Pio was restricted by the Vatican from practicing his priestly duties for two years because of fears that he was possessed by demons, but his passion and sanctity were finally established as gifts from God and hundreds of thousands of believers flocked to his little monastery in the rocky hills of Pietrelcina. He was a world-renowned confessor.

This is not a deep book, but it should work as a spiritual introduction to a modern saint, who was himself humble and simple and devout.

Paul Barra is based in

Reidville, South Carolina.