Welcome to our website dedicated to Padre Pio's shrine located at the Friary in Pantasaph, north Wales.
P eople have been coming to Pantasaph for 125 years on a constant spiritual journey. In 1852 the church of St. David’s, in Pantasaph was completed and, together with other buildings and surrounding land was given to the Franciscan Friars who arrived at that time. The Friary became the mother house, where all young postulants in Britain came to begin their novitiate. The order based at Pantasaph is the Capuchins and Padre Pio was also a Capuchin.
W hen the Brothers first arrived at Pantasaph, they offered God their sacrifice of praise and began working to make Pantasaph ‘a light on a hill’. Calvary was established on the hilltop, with a zigzagging footpath leading through the stations of the cross up to it. Our Lady’s grotto was created on the lower slopes. The friary church of Saint David was opened and the friars went out on missions across north Wales, planting churches along the coast. Pantasaph became a centre of pilgrimage offering a welcome to anyone who is sincerely searching for God.
S ince the feast of Pentecost 1999, the National Shrine of Padre Pio has been part of a spiritual pilgrimage. The garden Shrine was created at the foot of the hill that holds Calvary; the presence of Padre Pio so close to the cross seems an appropriate place for a friar who suffered the stigmata for fifty years. A large bronze statue of the saint which was donated by Mr. & Mrs Greco, has been erected in the north west corner of the shrine. On the day of Padre Pio’s canonisation, 16th June 2002, a smaller wooden statue was commissioned and blessed by Bishop Edwin Regan, to be sent out all across Britain as a pilgrim to visit people in their own churches and homes.