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by Elizabeth Ela

Today, June 19, 2009, begins the Church’s recognition of the Year for Priests. It’s a year, Pope Benedict XVI said, meant “to deepen the commitment of all priests to interior renewal for the sake of a more forceful and incisive witness to the Gospel in today’s world.”

The pope has chosen St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars and patron of parish priests, as the model for all priests this year – a fitting choice, considering the saint’s legendary devotion to his vocation, the Holy Mass, confession and leading his parishioners further and further toward Christ.

However, the first official trip that Pope Benedict will be taking after inaugurating the Year for Priests will be to another popular, albeit modern, saint’s town – San Giovanni Rotondo, the hometown of Padre Pio.

On Sunday, June 21, the pope will arrive in the southern Italian town that has become home to the Shrine of Padre Pio and one of the most visited Catholic sites in the world – second only to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. While there, Pope Benedict will say Mass in the square of the new Church of St. Pio of Pietrelcina; recite the Angelus; visit the hospital founded by the saint in the 1950s; meet with the clergy, religious and youth of the church and, finally, venerate the relics of St. Padre Pio, the Capuchin friar who became a world-renowned confessor, mystic and recipient of the stigmata.

It’s not an unsurprising lead into the very beginning of the Year for Priests.

Like St. John Vianney, St. Padre Pio would hear confessions for hours at a time, as penitents lined up by the hundreds to confess to the friar known for his ability to read souls. He was said to be able to describe the sins of penitents in even more detail than they would confess.

And although many miraculous healings have been attributed to Padre Pio – both within his lifetime and after his death – his personal secretary remarked upon the spiritual healings that the saint is continuing to achieve in Heaven.

“Many come to ask for [cures of] the body, but have a spiritual conversion and ask for confession,” said Capuchin Father Ermelindo in an interview with the National Catholic Register given shortly before Padre Pio's canonization.

Another parallel between the Curé of Ars and Padre Pio is their supernatural encounters with evil. Nighttime for St. John Vianney meant experiences that would seem like scenes out of The Exorcist, from his bed being set on fire to harrowing voices mocking his resolve to serve God in a region of France lukewarm to the faith. (One story says that, as St. John Vianney was performing an exorcism on a woman, she hurled herself at him shouting, “If there were three like you on earth, my kingdom would be destroyed. You have taken more than eighty thousand souls from me.”) (The Curé D’Ars Today, by George William Rutler). Fast-forward over 100 years – Padre Pio was also tormented by the devil, often to the point of suffering physical wounds.

Overall, both priests gave themselves over, body and spirit, for their flocks – whether French peasants or pilgrims from around the world. Whether the pope explicitly draws the connection between Padre Pio and the patron of the Year for Saints, the Italian friar is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable, modern witnesses the Church can point to as an example of the sacrificial aspect of the priesthood.

Every time a Catholic priest celebrates Mass, he is once again offering the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood for our salvation – an awesome privilege, St. John Vianney said, which “only in heaven” will priests fully realize they’ve been given. But throughout their entire lives, from the day they are ordained, priests are called to imitate Christ, particularly in His self-giving love for the Church. St. John Vianney did this by persevering to bring his faithless flock back to God, undaunted by his own bishop’s warning of the hardness of his task. St. Padre Pio took on the wounds of Christ Himself, receiving the stigmata in his hands, feet and side at the age of 31. Both were relentless in the face of persecution – whether it came from the devil or within the Church itself. And both labored tirelessly to reconcile souls to God through the Sacrament of Penance.

“Our own time urgently needs a similar proclamation and witness to the truth of Love: Deus caritas est,” Pope Benedict wrote in his letter to priests this week. God is Love – a Love that sacrifices all. In this upcoming Year, let’s pray for our priests, that they will be open to the graces Pope Benedict is begging to be poured out upon them – that in their hearts may awaken “a generous and renewed commitment to the ideal of complete self-oblation to Christ and the Church.”

Saints like John Vianney and Padre Pio show the way in which priests lay down their lives for the Church. And as the pope kneels before the relics of one the 20th century’s greatest priests, we’ll join our prayers with his, interceding for the laborers that Christ has sent out into the vineyard.