ACI Prensa Staff, 23 September, 2024 / 12:53 pm (ACI Africa).
Various historical testimonies document that the beloved St. Pio of Pietrelcina (commonly known as Padre Pio), whose feast day is celebrated on Sept. 23, had the gift of xenoglossia — that is, he was capable of speaking and writing in languages that he did not actually know.
The website PadrePio.it references what was noted by the holy priest’s spiritual director, Father Agostino da San Marco in Lamis, who in 1912 noted that the saint of the stigmata “knows neither Greek nor French.”
However, in February 1912, after receiving letters in one of those languages, the priest asked Padre Pio: “Who taught you French?”, to which the saint responded: “To your question about French I respond with Jeremiah… nescio loqui” (“Alas, I don’t know how to speak”).
On Sept. 20 of that same year, Padre Pio told Father Agostino: “The celestial figures do not stop visiting and making me taste the emotion of the blessed. And if the mission of our guardian angel is great, mine is greater having to act as a teacher to explain other languages.”
In his book “Sayings and Anecdotes of Padre Pio,” Father Constantino Capobianco wrote that Angela Serritelli’s brother, who lived in the United States, took his daughter to San Giovanni Rotondo, where Padre Pio lived, to receive Communion from his hands.
