By Joe Pisani
MONROE — For the Padre Pio Prayer Group of Fairfield County, it was a day dedicated to the Franciscan friar, who is one of the most beloved saints of modern times.
On the sixth day of the diocesan-wide novena to St. Pio, his relics came to St. Jude Parish in Monroe, which had Eucharistic adoration from 9 in the morning to 9 at night, including Mass and veneration of the relics by several hundred people from throughout the area.
For Bonnie Thibodeau, leader of the prayer group that began in 2025 and has been steadily growing, the day was nothing short of “amazing.”
“People dropped in all day,” she said. “People I had never seen before came from around the diocese. They prayed and lit candles. It was so simple, nothing fancy — it was what Padre Pio would want. He lived in a little cell and just wanted to be a prayerful friar. And that’s what people were looking for, to come and be very quiet and pray for their intentions through his intercession.”
They stood in a long line that stretched down a side aisle, waiting to venerate five relics of the saint — a crust from Saint Pio’s wounds, a piece of his mantle, his brown fingerless glove, a handkerchief he used at Mass to wipe his tears, and a lock of his hair. Some touched rosaries and other sacramentals to them and knelt for a few moments, offering a prayer to the saint known for the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, and the ability to read souls.
In the evening, Father Jozef Ukaj, parochial vicar, concelebrated Mass with Father Richard J. Gemza, pastor of Christ the King Parish. In his homily, Father Ukaj drew comparisons between St. Pio’s suffering and that of the biblical figure Job. Father said God permits suffering not to crush people but to strengthen their faith and bring them closer to Christ. Job was rewarded with blessings for his endurance while Padre Pio became a great saint.
Father stressed that to advance spiritually during adversity, we must emulate Christ through constant prayer and the sacraments, notably the Eucharist and frequent confession, which are great sources of grace.
The more we endure, the more God gives us to endure,” Father said. “If we do it with patience and with grace….With all of these things that happened, Padre Pio, did not curse God. He did not curse the superiors who went after him. And again, God allowed this to happen. They thought he was faking the stigmata. He was not even allowed to publicly say Mass or to hear confessions, which must have been such a burden for him, because he would hear confessions ten hours a day, so to take that away from him was a great source of suffering, but he bore it patiently. Through that suffering, he became one of the greatest saints in the last century.”
Father said that progression in the spiritual life is intimately linked to imitating Christ and that when God wants us to mature in faith, “some difficult things will be coming our way, but just like Padre Pio, though constant prayer and constant confession, we can come out on top no matter what the devil throws at us.”
Erica Reily, a member of the Padre Pio prayer group, said, “I am always amazed to see the vast number of people that are devoted to our saint.”
Luz Rivera, who had been to the novena four nights, said her devotion to Padre Pio was a fundamental part of her faith.
“I pray to him every day. I feel his presence,” she said. “I feel he’s there. I light him a candle. I bring him flowers. I talk to him about our problems, and I tell him, ‘You have so much on you, and you carried the cross, and you went through it, and you didn’t complain. Please help me be like you.’ I admire him because he suffered and he did it with love. He did it with love, and he didn’t complain.”
There are countless cases of physical and spiritual healings through Padre Pio’s intercession. He is the only priest who had the five wounds of Christ, in addition to the gift of bilocation — the ability to be in two places at the same time — even though he never left the Capuchin Friary of Our Lady of Grace in San Giovanni Rotondo in Italy, where he stayed from 1916 until his death in 1968. Today some 7 million pilgrims go there each year.
“Many of our members have been looking for people with a similar devotion to Padre Pio,” Thibodeau said. “They are finding the connection with the group to be very beneficial, and we hope to attract people from across the diocese.”
The membership currently includes 65 people from parishes in Shelton, Newtown, Trumbull and Monroe.The group meets the first Saturday of every month at St Jude Church with the rosary at 8:30 a.m., followed by Mass during which prayer petitions are presented during the offertory. They pray Padre Pio’s “Stay With Me Prayer” after Communion, Thibodeau said, and following Mass, there is a social hour in our hall and a speaker or video about the life of Padre Pio.
