The Padre Pio Novena
Nine days with the friar who carried the wounds for fifty years
The Padre Pio Novena is nine days of prayer asking St. Pius of Pietrelcina, known as Padre Pio to intercede, traditionally prayed for healing, perseverance in suffering, and confession made well. The feast day is 23 September. AngelGuard publishes when to begin, how the nine days work, and what the novena asks for.
Quick facts
What is the St. Pius of Pietrelcina, known as Padre Pio novena?
The Padre Pio Novena is nine days of prayer asking the intercession of one of the most documented saints in modern history. He died in 1968, within living memory for many, and was canonised in 2002. Pio was a Capuchin friar in southern Italy who bore the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, for around fifty years, and who spent an extraordinary proportion of his life hearing confessions, sometimes for more than twelve hours a day. That second fact is the one worth holding onto. What he is remembered for popularly is the miraculous; what he actually did, day after day for decades, was sit in a confessional. His novena is often prayed for healing, which reflects the reputation that grew around him during his lifetime. It is also prayed for perseverance, and that suits him better. He spent years under Vatican investigation and was for a period forbidden to celebrate Mass publicly. He submitted without complaint and continued. A novena to Pio prayed by someone in a long, unglamorous, unresolved difficulty is a novena prayed to the right saint. The Church is careful about the extraordinary claims that circulate around him, and so should anyone praying his novena be. What is certain and enough is the confessional, the obedience, and the fifty years.
How to pray it
Begin on 15 September if you want the ninth day on his feast. It is prayed year-round as well. Bring something long-running rather than something urgent. Pio’s particular witness is endurance under a difficulty that does not resolve quickly, and a novena for perseverance is closer to his life than a novena for a quick outcome. Go to confession during the nine days if you can. It is the single most fitting thing to do inside a Padre Pio novena, given how he spent his life. If you miss a day, carry on. Perseverance is the theme; treating a lapse as a disqualification would be against the spirit of the whole thing.
About the prayer text
Several versions of this novena circulate, and the wording is traditional rather than something to be improvised. Rather than publish a text we have not verified against a reliable Catholic source, this page gives you the structure, the timing, and the intention. Take the words themselves from your parish, your missal, or a Catholic publisher, and stay with one version for the full nine days.