santuario, matiano, diocesano, Santuario di Mamma Nostra nella parrocchia di Giovanni Battista Decollato

In the Calabrian town of Bivongi, the Santuario Diocesano di Mamma Nostra is a Baroque church with a distinctively local heart. Its focus of devotion is an eighteenth-century painting of the Madonna and Child, attributed in a manuscript to Mariangiola De Matteis, daughter of the Neapolitan painter Paolo De Matteis. During the novena and feast days, the panel is displayed high behind the high altar. The story goes that a missionary, Father Giuseppe Cretari, was told by the Virgin herself that she wished to remain here, venerated as “Mamma Nostra.” A wooden statue of the same subject was commissioned in Naples between 1720 and 1730, its base added around 1860 by the sculptor Michele Barillari. It stands near the end of the left aisle. The church was formally recognised as a diocesan sanctuary in 2002. A place where a grand Baroque tradition meets a very personal, local tenderness.

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