Santa Maria Mediatrice is a modern church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Via Santa Maria Mediatrice 53 which is just off the Via Aurelia and south of the west end of Vatican City. Picture of the church at Wikimedia Commons.[1]

HistoryEdit

The church was built 1940-1950 for the new Generalate of the Friars Minor. The architect was Giovanni Muzio, best known for the new Basilica of the Annunciation at Nazareth.

ExteriorEdit

The exterior is in brown brick with travertine stone trim, and the entrance façade is one face of the octagon. The doorway, which has a stone frame enclosing a transom window above the door, is flanked by two pairs of round columns with capitals. Each pair supports an architrave, but the latter do not connect over the door. These short architraves support two more pairs of similar columns; the inner two of these support an arch, and the outer two have two more architraves. Above the door is a mosaic of Our Lady, then a relief of the emblem of the Order (two human arms in front of a cross) and finally, on top of the arch, a symbolic mountain familiar on churches and other historic mountains elsewhere in Rome. Here it represents Mount Alvernia, where St Francis received the stigmata.

InteriorEdit

The floor plan is unusual, with an octagon preceding the long friar's choir. This plan has old roots, here executed with a modern flavour.

The mosaics in the low dome, which has a lantern, represent the Church Militant, Suffering and Triumphant. They are a joint work by Giorgio Quaroni, Adriano Alessandrini and Ugo Chluryia. There are two side altars; the left hand one is to St Mary Mediatrix with a relief by Francesco Nagni, and the right hand one is to St Francis with a depiction of his receiving the stigmata by Ivan Mestrovic. The fresco of the Glories of the Franciscan Order in the apse of the choir is by Gisberto Ceracchini.