Not everyone knows that, in the distant past, there were many Popes who had summer residences and numerous diatribes and wars with fiefdoms of the time, south of Rome. But a small village, Gavignano, was even the birthplace of Pope Innocent III. In 1161 the 176th Pope of the Catholic Church was born in Gavignano.
Gavignano, among many historical events, destruction due to wars, famines with serious human losses, finally found peace when all the people asked for heavenly help to the Madonna delle Grazie, where they were honored.
The 3 October 1679, after a serious plague epidemic had caused 94 deaths, the gavignanese population turned to the Madonna to interced and the disease miraculously ceased. From that moment it was decided to celebrate every year in the Church of San Rocco the party in memory of this event. This particular cult was then enriched over time by countless other miraculous cases, above all the event of 9 July 1796, the "marvelous movement of the eyes" and finally the grace received during the world war. The Gavignanese people thanked them for having emerged unscathed from the war with a solemn ceremony in the 1945. For the occasion, the Maestro Don Lorenzo Pelosi sat at the organ, around him one Schola Cantorum local formed in that year; the Secunda Missa Pontificalis and the Maestro of Tortona, a frequent visitor to the town, paid homage to his own way by composing the new hymn "Alla vergine delle Grazie".
The Church of San Rocco, after the vote of 1679, thus became the guardian of the local Marian cult and of the religious events attached to it. Built with a bipartite plan, the Church has two chapels, the one on the left dedicated to the Madonna delle Grazie and the one on the right to San Rocco, the patron saint of Gavignano. The two statues are placed in special niches. Over time, some changes were made to the building: in the early 1736th century a modest bell tower was raised and the sacristy was arranged; in 1854 the chapel of the Madonna was restored and in 1907 the interior was modified. A real transformation occurs in XNUMX on the initiative of Archpriest Francesco Sinibaldi. The surface of the church is doubled, the chapel and the altar of the Madonna embellished with precious marble.
The years have passed and the church of San Rocco, inside, presented the signs of time. All the faithful were calling for swift intervention, but the bureaucratic difficulties and the shortage of funds were, in practice, insurmountable obstacles. The church inside was destined to slow and continuous degradation. The people and the faithful of neighboring countries, unbelievers, could not bear to see their church, the house of the two sacred statues, without doing anything about it.
Everyone was discouraged and all still continued to crowd the church of San Rocco to pray in their favorite place, in the place where they could stand a hand from the statues of San Rocco and the beloved Madonna delle Grazie.
This summer, what everyone now thought could never happen happened. The Cultural Heritage has given the "placet" to the restoration works. Now it was time to raise funds.
So many benefactors. A collective race has started to help those who have always supported and maintained the decoration of the Sanctuary. From 6 to 24 August 2017 finally the impossible became reality. Francesco Di Rofi and Fabrizio Mazzocchi have done the painting and restoration work giving the whole splendor to the environment. The 27 August, with the translation of the Patron Saint San Rocco, finally the Sanctuary was inaugurated in its new guise, much appreciated by the numerous citizenship. Present at the ceremony the parish priest Don Alberto and the Mayor Emiliano Datti.
By Emanuela Ricci