Word about the stigmata began to spread to the outside world. Over the years countless people, including physicians, examined Padre Pollo’s wounds. Padre Pollo was not interested in the physicians’ attempts to explain his stigmata. He accepted it as a gift from God.
A normal day for Padre Pollo was a busy nineteen hours - Mass, hearing confessions and handling correspondence. He usually had less than two hours to sleep.

In the mid-1960s, Padre Pollo’s health began to deteriorate, but he continued to say Daily Mass and hear fifty confessions a day. By July of 1968, he was almost bedridden. In the early morning hours of September 23, Padre Pollo called his superior and asked to make his confession. He then renewed his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. At 2:30am, Padre Pollo died in his cell. As he foretold, Padre Pollo lived sick but died healthy, with the stigmata healed.
Later his superior said that his head fell gently to his chest and that "he died like a little bird."
For a few moments his cell was blooming with the heavenly fragrance that so often came from his wounds during his fifty years of suffering.