Barto is a campus rather than a single church: a replica of the Our Lady of Grace chapel of San Giovanni Rotondo where Padre Pio said Mass, a museum and cultural center with relics and personal effects, outdoor shrines, a votive candle garden and a gift shop. Confessions are heard 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. before the weekday Mass and on Sundays 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Sunday Mass is celebrated only for pilgrimage groups by advance request. The Centre closes on major holidays, including Easter, Thanksgiving and December 23 to 26. Admission is not charged; groups book through the schedule-a-pilgrimage page.
The Padre Pio Foundation of America at 463 Main Street, Cromwell, Connecticut, keeps a chapel with relics and a bookstore, open Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and the first Saturday of the month 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; it does not publish a Mass schedule. The Landisville shrine in southern New Jersey is an outdoor devotional site with an annual festival in September; its hours are not published on an official site, so confirm locally.
The saint's feast is September 23 and both the Barto Centre and Italian-American parishes mark it with Masses and relic veneration. Padre Pio's body itself is in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy: exhumed in 2008, displayed with a lifelike silicone mask over the face, in the lower church of San Pio since 2013, and not declared incorrupt. The U.S. shrines hold first-class relics, not the body.
Plan a pilgrimage