8,000 make pilgrimage to Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Naperville to view Padre Pio relics

More than 8,000 visitors — twice as many as expected — traveled to Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville Tuesday for an encounter with the relics of St. Pio of Pietrelcina.

Also known as Padre Pio, St. Pio was born Francesco Forgione in 1887 and became an Italian Franciscan Capuchin friar, priest and mystic. In 1918 he experienced permanent wounds on his hands and feet, known as a stigmata because they replicated Jesus’ crucifixation wounds, leading to his beatification in 1999 and canonized as St. Pio in 2002 by Pope John Paul II.

Relics associated with St. Pio were last in Naperville in October 2018, when about 4,000 people came to Sts. Peter and Paul Church to see them.

Ron Frederick, a Sts. Peter and Paul parishioner who is part of the team that organized the stopover, said church officials were hoping to get at least the same number of people this time despite the viewing being on a Tuesday rather than a Friday, as was the case in 2018.

Instead, twice as many showed up for the one-day viewing, which began with an 8 a.m. Mass and ended at 6:30 p.m. before a 7 p.m. Mass.

Frederick said the sanctuary was filled for the morning Mass, and the line of people waiting to view the five relics extended out of the church and down the street.

“They never stopped all day,” he said.

When the area was hit with an afternoon storm, everyone was brought inside and the line snaked through the church pews, Frederick said.

Teresita Dinnsen, who took a 44th wedding anniversary trip and pilgrimage to Padre Pio’s Italian hometown of San Giovanni Rotondo two weeks ago, described having the relics at her own church as “amazing. It was just amazing.”

A resident of Naperville since 1985, Dinnsen attended the 6:45 a.m. Mass and she and her husband returned after lunch to find the line wrapped around the church.

Because her husband walks with a cane, they were able to use a handicapped-accessible side door where there was no line, she said.

Seeing the Padre Pio relics brought back memories of her San Giovanni Rotondo trip and the visit to the Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church, where St. Pio’s body lies in a transparent casket, and the hospital founded by the priest, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza or the House of Relief of Suffering.

“We were there three nights and four days. It’s so peaceful,” Dinnsen said of the Italian city.

After the viewing and watching a movie on the life of St. Pio at Sts. Peter and Paul, she and her husband returned for the 7 p.m. Mass, she said.

“It was so crowded,” she said.

Padre Pio is known as the first stigmatized priest in the history of the Catholic Church.

The relics on display consisted of crusts from his wounds, cotton gauze bearing his blood stains, a lock of his hair, his handkerchief soaked with his sweat only hours before he died and a piece of St. Pio’s mantle/garment.

The faithful were allowed to bring religious items, such as rosaries, to carefully touch to the relics.

Sts. Peter and Paul Church was the only Illinois stop for the relics this year.