In 1998, Ursula decided to surprise me with a special gift for my 50th Birthday. She wrote to our friend Stella Lilley, who ran the Padre Pio Centre in Whitstable and asked her if it was possible for us to have a relic of Padre Pio. Not a prayer card, but an actual relic. She was not aware of how impossible this request was as 1st class relics are very precious and not given out so easily.
On the day Stella received Ursula’s letter, she had just cut a piece of Padre Pio’s bandage to give into the safe keeping of a local church. As she cut the cloth, two single small strands came loose, and she put them aside. She said that she felt the Lord had detached them on purpose for another person. Hours later, she received the request from Ursula and felt convinced that she should send these strands to us.
A second confirmation of this came on the day that this happened. Ursula was upstairs in our home in Ampleforth and busy with household chores. Suddenly she smelt a strong scent of roses. I would like to point out that Ursula lost her sense of smell after an accident at the age of nine. This was so strong that she rushed downstairs thinking that there must be a fire or something in the house for her to experience this. As she got to the ground floor, the smell suddenly disappeared. She thought then about Padre Pio and the way he sent ‘smell messages’.
When I returned from school, she told me about her surprise gift and the smell she had experienced that day. It was then that we phoned Stella and found out that she had just posted the relic to us.
She also encouraged us to join them on the Pilgrimage to San Giovanni that they were organizing for September that year and assured us that we would be able to afford it since she could arrange for us to pay it in instalments over a year. This proved to be a turning point in our lives.