Report Claims Padre Pio And Fatima Seer Both Issued Prophecies About John Paul I

By Michael H. Brown

Put it in the category of a bombshell. A report in an Italian magazine, the Messenger of St. Anthony, maintains that Padre Pio -- the incredible Italian stigmatic who was canonized last year -- predicted a situation that involved Albino Luciani -- Pope John Paul I -- before Luciani, at the time bishop of Vittorio Veneto, ascended to the Throne of Peter.

If true it is the second prophecy involving a recent Pope attributed to Pio, who was canonized recently. Previous unsubstantiated reports have claimed that Pio prophesied Karol Wojtyla's election to the papacy.

In the case of Luciani, who was Pope for only 33 days, the prediction was connected to Luciani's promotion as patriarch (or archbishop) of Venice. According to an article written by Renzo Allegri, Francesco Cavicchi, an entrepreneur from Conegliano Veneto [an Italian town], went to see the famous mystic in 1967 to receive spiritual counseling. At the end of their conversation, Padre Pio told him: "You must form a prayer group in your home town."

Once home, Cavicchi tried just that, says the magazine, appealing to Luciani, who at the time was his bishop -- but getting nowhere. "As soon as Luciani heard Padre Pio's name mentioned, the conversation ended abruptly," reports the publication. "'Enough!' said Luciani. 'I don't want to talk about this any longer.' In those days, Pio was not well accepted by ecclesiastical authorities."

When the businessman told the Capuchin friar about this a few months later, Pio is said to have remained silent a moment, and then replied, "Don't worry about it. The bishop himself will seek you out in due course. And you shall be granted written permission by the patriarch."

This seemed impossible, but Pio repeated his assertion that both the local bishop and the patriarch would come to Cavicchi's assistance in forming the prayer group. "Now go in peace!" he quoted Pio as saying.

Cavicchi returned home confused but watched the prediction materialize in incredibly literal fashion. This occurred a year after St. Pio's death when, on December 10, 1969, Cavicchi received a call from the secretary for Bishop Luciani, who announced that the bishop wanted to meet with him. When Cavicchi went to see then-Bishop Luciani, the future pope immediately turned the conversation to Pio, this time in a way that was highly sympathetic. He remembered the request for a prayer group and said that he would turn to that matter upon returning from a trip to Rome.

A few days later, news came that Bishop Luciani had been nominated Patriarch of Venice and granted Cavicchi written permission for the prayer group -- thus fulfilling Pio's words that the businessman would first hear from a "bishop" and then receive permission from the "patriarch."

Perhaps more interesting still, the Messenger of St. Anthony maintains that before he was Pope, in the spring of 1977, Bishop Luciani had a previously undisclosed visit with Fatima seer Lucia dos Santos in Coimbra, Portugal -- at which time Sister Lucia, a nun at the Mount Carmel Monastery, allegedly prophesied his election as Pope.

The publication quotes Pope John Paul I's brother, Edoardo, who took part in the pilgrimage, as recalling details about the dramatic meeting.

"Albino told his secretary to remain in the waiting room," he said. "The meeting was supposed to last only ten minutes, but as it turned out, it lasted about two hours. I don't know what they talked about. All I know is that, after this meeting, my brother was deeply troubled. In fact, he was so unsettled by this encounter that he remained completely silent for the whole trip home."

The Messenger reports that after the Pope's death, it became known that Lucia had greeted the then-Patriarch as "Holy Father." "She predicted his election to the papacy, but also that his pontificate would be a very short one and that he would be succeeded by a foreigner, a Cardinal from Cracow," claims Allegri. "This prediction was also confirmed by the Patriarch himself during one of his talks with the Venetian theologian Father Germano Pattaro."

Ironically, Luciani and his future successor, Karol Wojtyla, became close after the Fatima-related meeting, and it is said that Pope John I himself later predicted who would succeed him, indicating the person who was in the room right in front of him at the Conclave held in the Sistine Chapel.

That person was Karol Wojtyla -- Pope John Paul II -- who became pontiff after Pope John Paul I died mysteriously.

May 2004

[Bookstore Resources: Calls from the Message of Fatima, and Padre Pio: Man of Hope]