The threat (and reality) of rain did not deter the numbers of faithful who kept coming in from morning to night to venerate the relics of Padre Pio – St. Pio of Pietrelcina – at Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Waldorf, Maryland. And, for their trouble, they might have spied a rainbow from inside their cars on the Capital Beltway. 

The relics visited Our Lady Help of Christians on Oct. 7, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, at the request of pastor Father Alain Colliou, who said the people in his parish have a special devotion to the rosary. As a result, five rosaries were prayed during the 11-hour veneration period, one for each of the four sets of mysteries of the rosary, plus a fifth rosary in Spanish. 

It took about a year to arrange for the relics to make their way to Waldorf, according to parishioner George Conlin. He noted that, to help publicize the visit, the parish enlisted the web design skills of a former parishioner now in Texas who still keeps close ties to Our Lady Help of Christians. Conlin said that person designed the web pages surrounding the relics’ visit and the day’s schedule. It must have been so, because while it was maybe 65 degrees and rainy in Waldorf, the web page on the TV screen in the church foyer indicated in its lower right corner it was 87 degrees and mostly sunny! 

Richard Ruyack, a retired police officer from Yonkers, New York, served as the relics’ custodian on behalf of the St. Pio Foundation in nearby Tuckahoe, which sponsors the relics’ tours across the country. He’s been to “many places,” as far as Michigan and Arizona, with the relics. Now working for the city of Yonkers in a different job, he said, “the town is very flexible” in letting him travel with the relics. 

Ruyack said a display and veneration of the relics at a church in Williamsburg, Virginia, the day before the Waldorf showing, drew 2,000 faithful over the course of the day.  

Five different relics were shown: the crusts of the saint’s wounds; cotton gauze bearing his blood stains; a lock of his hair; his handkerchief soaked with his sweat only hours before he died; and a piece of Padre Pio's mantle. There are three classes of relics in the church. A first-class relic is part of the body of the saint. A second-class relic is something that the saint personally owned and used in his or her life. A third-class relic is an item that has been brought into contact with a first- or second-class relic.

Padre Pio was the first priest known to bear the stigmata – the wounds Jesus received on his hands, feet and side during his crucifixion. They first appeared in 1918 and he lived with the stigmata over the next 50 years until his death in 1968. 

Although Padre Pio was “a Capuchin monk who was very dear to God,” he was also “a very controversial figure,” Father Colliou said. “People thought he was faking. … But by the end of his life, people recognized he was a great saint.” 

Padre Pio was canonized in 2002 by Pope St. John Paul II under the name “Saint Pio of Pietrelcina.” One of his best-remembered lines is “Pray, hope and don’t worry.” 

That was entirely applicable to Dianne Solonika, the parish’s acting office manager. She had been expecting to pull a 12-hour shift on Oct. 7, starting an hour before the veneration began. However, she wound up being at Our Lady Help of Christians nearly four hours before the start of veneration because they could not do any setup the night before. 

Despite the precipitation, by any account the relics’ visit was successful. After the first rosary of the day, the line to venerate the relics reached to the back of the church. 

For Mike Rauer, it was not going to be just a long day or a long weekend, as he oversaw volunteer work during the veneration day. A member of the Knights of Columbus, Rauer had a number of opportunities to serve with the Knights on those days, as the organization was sponsoring several activities around the three-day weekend culminating in the federal holiday originally named after the Knights’ namesake, Christopher Columbus. Rauer had to turn down at least one such activity because he can’t be in two places at the same time – unlike Padre Pio, who reportedly could bilocate.  

Anyone who missed the relics in Waldorf still has another chance within the archdiocese this year to view them. They will make a stop Tuesday, Nov. 7 at Holy Family Church in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland. The church will be open 9 a.m.-6 p.m. for veneration, with a Mass in honor of Padre Pio at 7 p.m.