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Mother Church of Saint Gerland

PARISH OF SAN GERLANDO AND LIBERTY SQUARE

The Parish Church of San Gerlando overlooks Piazza Garibaldi and was built a few years after the foundation of the Bourbon colony in 1843.

During World War II, the church was almost completely destroyed by the Anglo-American bombings of 1943 and had to be rebuilt from its foundations.

The dedication to Saint Gerlando, the Norman bishop of Agrigento who reorganized the diocese after the Saracen occupation of Sicily during the 9th and 10th centuries, dates back to 1948.

Its exterior façade is simple and linear. Inside the bell tower opening there is a mural titled La Madonna dell’Adesso, created in 2019 by street artist Simone Ferrarini.

The interior, characterized by a single nave, is spacious and filled with natural light.

At the center of the apse stands a large statue depicting Christ on a cross made from the oars of Cuban fishermen’s boats. The artwork, titled Milagro (“Miracle”), was created by Cuban artist Alexis Machado and gifted to Lampedusa by Pope Francis. It commemorates all those who cross the Mediterranean seeking a better future and exercising their right to move toward places where they hope to build a new life.

Another gift from Pope Francis is a terracotta nativity scene displayed in a glass case near the entrance on the left side. Here, the Holy Family is portrayed aboard a boat at the exact moment a person is being rescued at sea.

Above, near the entrance, hangs a large painting depicting the legendary Andrea Anfossi and the miraculous story of his sea journey from Lampedusa to Liguria aboard a makeshift boat. According to tradition, he used an image of the Madonna as a sail, holding it high in his arms.

Finally, beside the altar there is a space where, every September, the statue of Madonna di Porto Salvo is placed during the patron saint celebrations held on September 22nd.

In Piazza Garibaldi, directly in front of the Parish of San Gerlando, there are two monuments.

To the south-west, raised on a stone block, stands a crucifix created by the artist Roberto Joppolo from Viterbo. The work, titled The Mosaic of Humanity, was inaugurated on June 20th, 2018.

It is “a 2.5-meter-high iron structure in the shape of a Latin cross, composed of multicolored ceramic tiles representing the faces of humanity converging, on the front side, toward the figure of the Holy Father as a symbol of universal brotherhood, and on the back side, toward Saint Francis, master of universal fraternity.”

Pope Francis himself blessed the artwork before its installation in Lampedusa.

Two other versions of the crucifix exist: one in Viterbo and another in Costa Rica, in San José, home to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the University for Peace of a country that abolished its armed forces in 1948.

On the south-east side of the same square stands a huge block of white marble weighing approximately twenty tons, cut from a quarry in Massa Carrara and transported to Lampedusa.

In 2022, the block was positioned upright and sculptor Guglielmo Vecchietti Massacci began working on transforming it into a monumental sculpture that, according to the original project, was meant to be inaugurated on the anniversary of the tragic shipwreck of October 3rd, 2013.

The artwork was to be called Wings of Freedom and designed as two large white wings carved into the monolith, allowing visitors to walk through them and interact directly with the installation.

Unfortunately, during the construction process, the artist suffered two serious accidents — the first while setting up the scaffolding and the second after the initial marble carving work had begun — forcing him into a long recovery.

Since then, work on the sculpture has never resumed.

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