Padre Pio medal bracelet

Padre Pio Medal Bracelet — Italian Silver-Tone Medals, Medjugorje Handwoven Cord

The Padre Pio medal bracelet wraps a series of small oval Padre Pio medals in silver tone around a handwoven cord — a devotional bracelet to Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin friar whose pierced hands defined twentieth-century Catholic mysticism. Born Francesco Forgione on May 25, 1887, in Pietrelcina, Italy, he entered the Capuchin Franciscans at fifteen, taking the name Pio, and was ordained a priest in 1910. On the morning of September 20, 1918, while praying in the choir loft of the Church of Our Lady of Grace at San Giovanni Rotondo, he received the visible stigmata — the five wounds of Christ on his hands, feet, and side. He was the first priest in the history of the Church to bear them, and he carried them for fifty years until his death. Throughout his ministry he spent twelve to fifteen hours a day in the confessional, and was credited with bilocation, reading hearts, prophecy, and miraculous healings. In 1956 he founded the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza — the Home for the Relief of Suffering — which today remains one of Italy’s leading research hospitals. In 1948 he heard the confession of a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyła, who many years later — as Pope John Paul II — beatified him on May 2, 1999 and canonized him on June 16, 2002, before 300,000 pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square. He died on September 23, 1968, his last whispered words «Gesù, Maria!» — the stigmata disappearing from his body without trace. His relics rest at the Renzo Piano-designed shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo, which welcomes some eight million pilgrims a year — second only to Guadalupe in Mexico City. His feast is September 23, and his enduring counsel remains the simplest of all: «Pray, hope, and don’t worry» («Prega, spera e non ti agitare»).

Each Padre Pio medal bracelet features approximately ten small oval Padre Pio medals in silver tone, produced in Italy and hand-knotted into a woven Medjugorje cord. Available in 15 cord colors for parish gift shops, Italian-American parishes, Capuchin and Franciscan friaries, Catholic schools, Confirmation gifts, pilgrimage agencies serving San Giovanni Rotondo, and stress-relief ministries. Supplied in packs of 10.

Handwoven in Medjugorje by women who pray as they tie each knot, every Padre Pio medal bracelet from MIRJAM DOO carries devotion at its source — Italian medals, Bosnian hands, in honour of the saint who taught the world to pray, to hope, and not to worry.