On September 20, 1918, while praying in the choir loft of the friary of San Giovanni Rotondo, Padre Pio — a Capuchin Franciscan priest of thirty-one — received the visible stigmata. He bore the wounds for fifty years until his death in 1968 — the longest documented case in Church history.
Physicians who examined him, including the surgeon Dr. Luigi Romanelli (1919–1925) and the pathologist Dr. Giorgio Festa (1920), could not classify the wounds. They did not become infected; they did not heal; they bled approximately a cup of blood a day. After his death in 1968, the wounds were found to have disappeared.
He was also widely reported in bilocation — appearing simultaneously in places hundreds of miles apart — in reading the hearts and unconfessed sins of penitents, in the gift of tongues, and in a sweet fragrance (the 'odor of sanctity') reported around his person. He survived for long periods on almost no food but the Eucharist.
He founded the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza ('Home for the Relief of Suffering'), a major hospital in southern Italy that continues to operate today. Beatified 1999, canonised by John Paul II in 2002.