Gesù Divino Lavaratore is a modern parish and titular church at Via Oderisi da Gubbio 16 in the Portuense district, just south of Trastevere train station. Pictures of the church at Wikimedia Commons. [1]

The dedication is to Jesus Christ as a manual worker (the context is his early life in Nazareth), and the present titular is Christoph Schönborn.

ExteriorEdit

It was designed by Raffaele Fagnoni, and completed in 1960. It is usually described as circular, but is actually slightly oval or egg-shaped with the pointed end at the altar. The roof forms a shallow saucer dome, around which the margin of the roof slopes inwards to a gully forming the edge of the dome. The external wall is blank red brick, enlivened by two narrow white string courses running all the way round. Between the top of the wall and the roof is a strip of window, and unusually the wall has a row of brick crosses on its top, like battlements. The roof eaves project so as to create the dome margin mentioned above. Right in front of the entrance is a massive campanile like a truncated red brick factory chimney, with three thin white string courses around its base and an open bell-chamber made up of concrete struts arranged in a zig-zag.

InteriorEdit

The interior is an open space with the concrete roof exposed, the shuttering marks being visible. There are radial concrete beams supporting this, and they are in turn supported by thin concrete slabs projecting from the wall. The strip of window below the roof is of clear glass, and there is little in the way of artworks apart from the crucifix over the altar, which is set on a big mosaic panel made up of tiles.

External linksEdit

Official diocesan web-page

Italian Wikipedia page

Parish website