An extraordinary life runs through these pages, the story of a man called Francesco Forgione who lived from 1887 to 1968. The world knows him as Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, his face is represented everywhere, but forty years after his death, there is still much to say and much to know about his life. Especially if one sets aside any intention of apology or, vice-versa, prejudice. What does it mean to be born a peasant in the poverty-stricken South of Italy at the end of the 1800’s? What does it mean for a sixteen year old to enter a monastery in 1903? What happens in the lives of a young friar and his family at the appearance of the first signs of a privileged relationship with spirituality? Sandro Mayer and Osvaldo Orlandini rigorously and precisely reconstruct events, details and the cultural context “live”, as if they were discovering Padre Pio along with their readers. They narrate his true existence against the background of the grand history of Italy. And they do it with sensitivity and empathy in a language that speaks to our hearts. Beginning with news documents and direct testimonies, the authors bring the historical material alive, imagining the dialogues, the sensations, the looks and the movements. So it is more a historical novel than a traditional biography: the facts are narrated as if they were happening right now, with a transparent, crystal clear, enthralling style. What unfolds page after page is the romance of a life. The life that our great grandparents, our grandparents, our parents lived, and the life that we are living now. So that whoever reads this book will finally have the chance to truly know Francesco Forgione, to know how he became Padre Pio; to enter on tip-toe into his daily life and the luminous mystery of his sainthood.