Padre Pio and America - Frank Rega

First titled The Holy Man on the Mountain, this book tells the fascinating life story of Padre Pio, with emphasis on his life as a seminarian, young priest and his early decades at San Giovanni Rotondo. Incredible is the number of times the Capuchins sent him home sick unto death while a seminarian and young priest and how he was finally sent to remote San Giovanni Rotondo “for a couple of weeks of mountain air.” He never left. But from this small, remote mountain friary, he became world-famous and exercised unbelievable influence on the entire world—though early on, he was forbidden by his superiors to preach, to write, or to correspond. Author Frank Rega also weaves in the Saint’s early work with "L’Americana," Mary Pyle, his “foreign ambassadress,” and then with the American GI’s who came to visit him during World War II, when San Giovanni Rotondo was liberated from the Germans. Padre Pio developed a special love for Americans and America—to the point that he wished that all America