Cappella della Casa Shalom is a mid 20th century convent chapel at Via Oppido Mamertina 40, which is in the Appio Claudio quarter.
History 
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The "Sisters of Jesus the Redeemer" (Suore di Gesù Redentore, in French Soeurs de Jésus Rédempteur) were founded by Victorine Le Dieu de La Ruaudière (Mother Marie-Joseph de Jésus). She was born at Avranches, France in 1809 and tried to become a nun when young, but family and health problems prevented this. Instead, she (unusually) managed to obtain papal permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament at her home, with the intention of founding a congregation dedicated to reparative adoration and charitable works. This took place in 1863, when she was already aged 54. Her first disciples helped her to set up an orphanage for small boys.
Like other religious founders of the period, she relied on Divine Providence to provide economic security but, in her case, this was not enough to ward off the results of financial insouciance and the infant community was suppressed as hopelessly indebted in 1873. She tried again in France at several places, notably at Aulnay-sous-Bois, but had to flee in the face of accumulated problems (including unhappy debtors) and ended up in Rome. There, she re-made her vows in 1881 and opened an orphanage on the Via Tasso in 1883. She was 74, and died the following year.
The Roman and Aulnay branches of the congregation were independent until 1925, when they united with a Generalate (headquarters at Aulny. So, this little French congregation actually belongs in Rome (others followed a fashion for establishing a Rome convent in the 20th century).
The Rome convent is now run as a Casa per ferie or holiday hotel, and as such has a good reputation.
Appearance Edit
The convent and casa is a straightforward two-storey suburban villa, earlier 20th century. The chapel is part of a separate and later one-storey flat-roofed annexe, accessed via a short covered corridor. However, it has its own identity with the rest of the annexe abutting on the right hand side.
This amounts to a small church, having a single nave of three bays leading to a narrower sanctuary bay integral with a semi-circular apse. All these are under the same gabled roof, which is in a greyish-green composition.
The walls are in bright white. The exposed left hand nave side wall has three round-headed windows.
The façade has a single entrance, with a floating canopy and flanked by two little round-headed windows. A simple black cross is on the façade above the entrance.
The plain interior is all in white. The altarpiece is a copy of the icon of The Trinity by Rublev.
