In 1994, my husband became very ill with Crohn’s Disease. He was not responding to the medical treatment that he was given. He became sicker and sicker and was in the Maine General Hospital in Waterville, Maine for 45 days. He had lost so much weight that he looked like a skeleton. There was a Padre Pio prayer group that met at St. Mary’s parish in Agusta and my friend contacted them and told them about my husband’s condition. They gave her their relic to borrow. It was a part of Padre Pio’s glove encased in glass. They promised to pray for my husband. I brought the relic to the hospital that night and placed it on my husband’s stomach and he and I prayed the novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That was the prayer that Padre Pio had always prayed. My husband called me from the hospital at 4:00 a.m. the next morning. I was surprised since he was so weak that he could barely lift his hand. He told me that something had happened when the glove was placed on his stomach. He felt a warmth go all the way through his body. When the doctors came in to examine him the next morning, they were astounded. The swelling in his stomach had disappeared. They decided to go ahead and do surgery but the surgery went beautifully and he has never been bothered with this dread disease since. I know Padre Pio’s powerful intercession healed my husband and it was after that experience that I became a spiritual child of Padre Pio.

– Ann Douglass