Chiesa di Giarre

The hamlet of Giarre is a recently formed locality, although its territory should be investigated from an archaeological and photographic perspective to better understand the possible ancient visits.
The oldest current evidence dates back to the second half of the 18th century when the Villa Dondi Dell’Orologio (Via Lungo Argine) is documented, followed by Wollemborg and Sgaravatti. Equipped since 1897 with a small Oratory consecrated to Saint Giustina (no longer existing), the rural community would eventually have its own chaplain (later Parish Priest) and its Parochial Church, built according to the design of architect Giulio Brunetta from the University of Padua, inaugurated on March 25, 1956, by Monsignor Girolamo Bortignon, Bishop of Padua, and dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Parochial Church is a simple yet very elegant building, characterized by the use of trachyte, with a liturgical axis East>West, a spacious interior consisting of a single nave, flanked by two chapels, and the presbytery-choir.
A relic of Blessed Liduina Meneguzzi is preserved here, a nun of the Salesian order or the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Francis de Sales, founded by Don Domenico Leonati in 1740.
Elisa Angela Meneguzzi was born in Giarre on September 12, 1901, into a humble farming family, deciding in 1926 to join the Salesians and taking the name Liduina. She undertook various duties to serve others, and in 1937 fulfilled her dream of going on a mission, being sent to Dire-Dawa in Ethiopia, where she worked as a nurse at the Parini Civil Hospital. Sister Gudda (= Great) was soon beloved by the indigenous population for her charity. World War II quickly transformed the Ethiopian city into a vast concentration camp and the healthcare facility into a military hospital. The Angel of Charity tirelessly assisted the sick and wounded of the war, without distinction between natives and Europeans, civilians and soldiers, whites and blacks, Catholics and Copts, Muslims and pagans. And she did so until her last day, December 2, 1941: her mortal remains rest in the chapel next to the Mother House of the order, in Padua (Santa Croce district).
On October 20, 2002, Pope John Paul II beatified her, thanks to the process that recognized the miracle of her intercession for the life of a young truck driver from Lombardy in 1977.
The relic is located at the right altar, dominated by the altarpiece depicting the Madonna with Child and Saints by Pietro Damini, a painter from Castelfranco who stood out in the Venetian and Padovan artistic scene particularly during the second and third decades of the 17th century, inspired by the monumentality, luminosity, and chromaticism of Veronese.
Among the other works present, the fresco in the apse with The Consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, executed by Prof. Isidoro Licini, stands out. Note the praying people together with Pius XII (in the lower right) at the feet of Mary: the open book at the bottom bears two dates, that of the Pope's consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942 and that of the execution of the fresco in 1957. The religious building depicted in the lower left is not the Parochial Church of Giarre, but the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Abano (from which the Curacy of Giarre depended until the establishment of the Parish on April 6, 1954), not with its current appearance (1967), but with the neo-Palladian style façade built in 1905.