When she experienced the mysterious encounter, Golędzinowska was leading a far from virtuous life.Though a successful model, an actress in Italian sitcoms, and a TV presenter, she admits to struggling with substance abuse, lacking faith in God, and even developing a strong resentment toward the Catholic Church. Saint Pio, she believes, came to warn her to change her ways. The former model recalls the day when she finally identified him: “For years, I did not know who he was. Even in my book I reported this incident but did not include the man’s name” Ania Golędzinowska told Brother Marcin Radomski in an [interview] she gave earlier this year in Łomża, Poland. This is the first time this part of her story is being told in English.

“It was only five months ago in Medjugorje that somebody gave me a book about the life of Padre Pio, and for the first time, after eight years, I could give the name of the person who eight years ago came to admonish me, to warn me that if I would continue leading my life this way then I would not go far.” Golędzinowska was very open about how far away she strayed from the Church in those years, to the point of developing a hatred for all things Catholic.

“I was far from the Church. If I would get a chance, I would shoot all priests and nuns. Whenever I saw a church, I would cross to the other side of the street. I abused drugs. I drank.” Then one night a warning came. Even her dog, Golędzinowska recalls, sensed the presence of a stranger in the room, suggesting to her that this was no hallucination.

“A certain day, a certain night I woke up because my dog was barking. And by the side of my bed stood this man, older, with a beard, and he was looking at me, shaking his head. I thought that it was some kind of hallucination because of the alcohol or drugs – no, this is not possible, I thought. Then I turned on the light, and this man was still standing by my bedside, shaking his head and my dog was still barking at him.”

Though Golędzinowska believes Saint Pio came to her with an important message, he did not need words to convey it. “He did not say anything, but he was looking at me as if he wanted to say: ‘Ania, what are you doing?’” Ania Golędzinowska made much news last year when Catholic Herald published a popular interview with her. The interview centered around her life-changing conversion in Medjugorje and its consequences. She made the decision to leave the life of glamour and fame in high Italian society behind for a simple, peasant life of prayer and service in Medjugorje, where she has been living since 2011 with Pure Hearts, a Marian community of priests and nuns.

For the Polish model, this required ending a prominent relationship with her boyfriend Paolo Enrico Beretta, the nephew of then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Lately, Golędzinowska has spent much time touring Poland, as a Polish edition of her autobiography was recently released, translated by a priest.

Her book, Ocalona z Piekła: Wyznania byłej Modelki translates to “Rescued from Hell: Confessions of a former Model.” A section in the book describes Golędzinowska’s encounter with the visitor who appeared to her in the middle of the night years ago to give her a helpful warning. Now readers may know that Ania Golędzinowska has identified the mysterious visitor as Saint Pio of Pietrelcina.