San Giuda Taddeo ai Cessati Spiriti is a later 20th century parish church with a postal address at Via Amedeo Crivellucci 3, in the Appio-Latino district in between the Via Latina and the Via Appia Nuova. It is near the Colli Albani metro station on the latter road.
The main entrance faces onto the Largo Pietro Tacchi Venturi.
Name
The patron saint is the apostle Judas, otherwise known as Thaddeus (the names don't refer to two people). In England, the wish to avoid confusion with Judas Iscariot led him to be renamed St Jude.
In 2012, the name of the parish was changed to San Giuda Taddeo, Apostolo.
History
The parish was founded in 1960. The church was designed by Giorgio Biuso, and built in the same year as part of a social centre.
According to "Beweb", there was a major re-fit from 1994 to 1996 which was supervised by Giorgio Forti and Roberto Spaccasassi.
Exterior
Location
From the VIa Amadeo Crivellucci the church is hidden away behind a truly horrible red-brick two storey building comprising the administrative and presbyteral facilities, looking like a run-down and graffiti-defaced factory. Look for the cross on the north-west corner to find the entrance to the parish offices. This edifice wraps around the church in an L on its right and far sides.
The entrance frontage of the church is visible from the Largo Pietro Tacchi Venturi (behind the trees), where there is the main entrance, and the left hand side can be seen from the Via Latina.
However, it must be admitted that a civic presence was not a priority in the church's design
Layout and fabric
The church is a Modernist edifice in reinforced concrete, on a square plan. It stands on a ground-level crypt, and hence looks higher externally than it actually is inside.
The fabric is influenced by the form of the roof, which is in four transverse zones. At the entrance end it is flat, covering an atrium, and then it has a slight pitch downwards over the main worshipping area. Then it rises at a slightly sharper angle over the sanctuary, to end at a very narrow flat strip next to the far wall. The atrium zone has a circular skylight towards it right hand end, and the sanctuary zone has a tilted elliptical skylight in a protruding cylindrical collar at its far right hand end. This seems to light the baptistery. The far flat strip has a row of eight small square skylights.
The main illumination in the church comes from a large, narrow rhombic skylight occupying the major axis of the sloping zones of the roof. This has a horizontal ridge-line following the axis with a slope of fenestration on each side, so the rhombic shape is created by the slopes of the roof.
The side walls are blank, and are tiled in yellow so-called sferogranito. This is a propriety material made up from roughly crushed granite. Triangular windows are inserted in between the horizontal tops of the walls and the slopes of the roof. The roof eaves are very deep, in white and are bounded by a pair of simple cornices.
The top corners are occupied by a pair of small semi-cylindrical chapels that jut out. The sanctuary is a long, shallow rectangular apse.
Campanile
There is a semi-cylindrical tower campanile in white concrete occupying the near left hand corner, interrupting the lines of the eaves. The atrium has a side entrance behind this in the side wall, which here is recessed and has four vertical slit windows above the entrance. This doorway is accessed by a ramp down from the main frontage, which curves as a collar around the base of the tower.
The campanile is open at the top and sides, and has an open strip recess running down the near side within which is dark grey concrete. Two vertical concrete slabs stand on the roof close to the bell-chamber, the right hand one being smaller. There is a large white cross finial attached to this side
Façade
The façade has an irregular design, and cannot be called pretty. It is dominated by the very deep and protruding roof eave, below which is the yellow-tiled wall which incurves vertically in a quarter-circle about two-thirds of the way to the right. Below the eave to the left is a bundle of three horizontal beams, increasing in length and depth with height (the one next to the eave is largest). The entrance is fronted by an elevated patio with a screen wall frontage in dark grey concrete, matched by the deep eave of the massive floating horizontal canopy.
Interior
The interior is in white, with the fenestration in clear glass. The ceiling has longitudinal coffers bounded by deep slab beams.
An important series of artworks by Oliviero Rainaldi were installed in 2000. These comprise a depiction in mosaic and stucco of the Elders of the Apocalypse in the sanctuary apse, two plaster bas-reliefs of the Last Supper (in the far right hand corner chapel) and the Resurrection (in the left hand one) and a plaster statue of Our Lady with the Infant Jesus on the wall just to the left of the sanctuary. The works are mostly in white.
Above the sanctuary apse a bronze statue of St Jude is attached to the wall.
Liturgy
Mass is celebrated:
Weekdays 8:00 (not August), 9:00 (not summer), 18:30 (19:00 in summer);
Sundays and Solemnities 8:30, 10:00, 11:30 (not summer), 18:30 (19:00 in summer).