santuario, mariano, diocesano, Santuario Mariano Diocesano Santa Maria Assunta del Leandro

On a low hillside some four kilometres from Motta San Giovanni, in the contrada Oleandro, stands the church of Santa Maria Assunta, better known as Santa Maria del Leandro. A single-nave medieval church with a pointed façade and a campanile to the left, it is a sanctuary whose long history is written in its stones and its furnishings.

Inside, near the entrance, a sixteenth-century marble holy-water stoup survives. The main altar niche holds a marble statue of the Madonna and Child, a work whose iconography and style point to the Carrarese sculptor Giambattista Mazzolo. A painted reproduction of this group, dated 1906 and signed R. Nardi, is carried in procession through the streets of Motta San Giovanni on the feast of the Assumption, 15 August.

The church was once under the monastery of San Giovanni Teologo and governed by a lay confraternity, as recorded in a pastoral visit of 1595. In May 2025, the Archbishop of Reggio Calabria-Bova formally elevated it to a diocesan Marian sanctuary, recognising its enduring role in local devotion.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.