Festa Madonna delle Grazie - Francavilla al Mare (CH) 8/09/2024 ABRUZZO #event #church #travel

In this video I' m in my city, Francavilla al Mare, a municipality in the province of Chieti in Abruzzo. On September 7 and 8, the celebrations in honor of the Madonna delle Grazie took place, a lovely subsidiary church of the parish church of Sant' Alfonso Maria de' Liguori. The church is located in a park on the upper part of the Villanesi hill, a district that over the years has become a complex residential neighborhood, surrounded by greenery of maritime pines. The neoclassical church has a rectangular layout with a single nave, a gabled façade with a sloping roof, a brick bell tower whose placement follows the curve of the apse, large side windows. The interior, restored in the first decade of the 2000s, is covered by a wooden truss roof and still has the ancient altar where Mass was celebrated behind the faithful. The presbytery area behind the altar ends in an apse and has a niche in which the ancient statue of the Madonna delle Grazie is preserved. The processional statue was added about 10 years ago. The history and origins have been carefully described in the article by Antonio Mezzanotte https://parolmente.it/la-chiesa-della... The site was occupied by a rustic villa requisitioned by the French at the beginning of the nineteenth century and donated by Napoleon himself to one of his faithful generals. In Naples, he met Carlo Petrosemolo, a merchant from Ortona whose business acumen seemed to be inversely proportional to his height, which was actually rather short. Petrosemolo had his eye on Villanesi's property and, wanting to take possession of it for a crust of bread, convinced the French officer that, in reality, that hill was of little value, arid and not at all productive. The French heir, good at war and a lover of the good life in Naples, had not yet visited the property and thought that the Emperor had played a dirty trick on him by giving him an unproductive land, so he was happy to sell the farm to Petrosemolo, settling for the four francs that the latter gave him. Instead, the Villanesi hill was, in addition to being rich in settlements, vegetable gardens, vineyards and olive groves, also well exposed and the Ortonese made a really good deal. In his memory, this area is still called "Carletto", due to the physical characteristics of the buyer, not exactly excellent. Petrosemolo was married to a rich Venetian noblewoman, Regina Bon, a lady of the court in Naples. Her nephew, Angelo Bon, was very well liked by Petrosemolo who, having no children, named him heir of the entire estate. Angelo Bon, unlike his uncle, was little or not at all cut out for business and squandered his entire fortune but first managed to build the still existing church dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie, as the Latin inscription on the entrance portal still reports. The building was blessed by Canon Agostino Paolini, curate of Santa Maria Maggiore in Francavilla, on Thursday 3 September 1857. Various owners succeeded one another in the possession of the church and the park, until in 1943 the entire area was used by the German army as an anti-aircraft base and for the control of the underlying Adriatic state road. Today the park and church are registered as municipal property and it would probably be a good and right thing to carry out maintenance work on the church, whose external plaster is now completely ruined, as are the decorative elements of the facade. Returning to the video .... it focuses on the religious program of the second and main day of celebration in which the Holy Mass was held in the open air and the Solemn procession. The Holy Mass, celebrated by the Deputy Parish Priest pro tempore, Father Massimiliano Mura, was enriched by the presence of the choir and musicians of the parish PGVR youth group in the liturgical accompaniment. The procession was enlivened by the music of the Banda di Atessa and led in the prayer of the Holy Rosary by Deacon Gianluigi Colucci with the participation of the citizens and the Mayor Luisa Russo. It ended with a small fireworks display and the final blessing on the return. The traditional Procession of the Madonna delle Grazie was once always held in the morning and for about 15 years it has been moved to the evening to be able to experience it in a less hot climate and do the torchlight procession with candles. Enjoy the show! We recommend using headphones for more accurate listening. Production of ReporterAG © - "Gabriele Benvenuto". © Multimedia material protected by copyright and intellectual property of the author. Any reuse is prohibited. Social: FACEBOOK:   / gabrielebenvenutophotography   INSTAGRAM:   / reporterag   TIK TOK:   / reporteragofficial