OUR LADY OF COVOLO

 Day 329: April 06

Our Lady of Covolo, Crespano del Grappa, Treviso, Italy



The Sanctuary is located 600 meters away, on the slopes of Monte Grappa. Towards the middle of the twelfth century, Our Lady appeared to a deaf-mute shepherdess from Crespano who, alone grazing with sheep, during a storm had taken refuge in a cave (hence the name Covolo), where she was praying. The Virgin spoke to her and told her to go to Crespano to tell everyone that she wanted a chapel there. The girl, who had heard for the first time in her life, gained the voice and hearing to do as she was commanded.

The first chapel dates back to 1300 and was enlarged in 1541 and 1605. The current construction is the work of the architect Antonio Canova of Possa who built the new Sanctuary of Covolo from 1804 to 1809, preserving the ancient church set to the north in the rock and building an elegant rotunda with an atrium supported by eight Ionic style columns to the south.

In 1844 the current road was built thanks to the contribution of numerous groups of volunteers from dozens of villages between the Brenta and the Piave. On Good Friday of the following year, a boulder detached from the mountain and fell on the Sanctuary, destroying the sacristy and presbytery.

The statue of Our Lady was recovered at the bottom of the intact valley. In the valley known as the Madonna, just south of the Sanctuary, there is the source of the Tre Busi: this water, which has always been the object of great devotion, gushed out to facilitate the construction of the first chapel. It is said that Our Lady stuck three fingers into the rock of the cave in the valley below the sanctuary, making a spring of water gush out. Along the three kilometers that go up from Crespano to Covolo, the fifteen capitals of the Mysteries of the Rosary were built in 1943.

On the triangular pediment of the façade there is a fresco depicting the apparition of the Virgin to the shepherdess. The entrance has a walnut portal, the work of the Crespanese Fermo Scudo. Inside, in the dome of the rotunda, we find the painting of the Glory of Angels by the priest Delmetrio Alpago.

We find decorations of angels representing the Mysteries of the Rosary. In the choir, after the four columns, it is possible to admire, at the top, the fresco by Alpago representing the complete temple seen from the valley, with the Virgin blessing Crespano and the Nativity of the Virgin, considered his masterpiece. In addition, symbols representing the four Marian religious orders are illustrated: the Dominicans, the Servites, the Carmelites, the Trinitarians.

The decorations are almost all from the first decade of the twentieth century. On the main altar is the statue of the Virgin which remained miraculously intact after the collapse of the walls in 1845. On 8 September 1923 the statue was solemnly crowned.

The Annunciation is celebrated with solemnity on March 25; Easter Monday; the last day of May, the Rose Festival; on August 15, the Assumption; on 8 September, the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, as well as the patronal feast; on November 21st, Our Lady of Health and on December 8th, the Immaculate Conception.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"To you the triumph of the soul, to you the enthronement of Jesus in my soul, since you had a very relevant part in every elevation of the soul. Every new grade of grace in us is your glory and your glory glorifies Jesus in us, glorifies the Holy Trinity."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, pp. 122-123)

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