San Filippo Neri alla Pineta Sacchetti is a Fascist-era parish church at Via Martino V 28 in the south-east corner of the Primavalle quarter, near the Via di Boccea. Pictures of the church on Wikimedia Commons are here.
The dedication is to St Philip Neri.
History
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The parish was set up in 1934, and initially entrusted to the Poor Servants of Divine Providence (Poveri Servi della Divina Provvidenza). They passed it on to the Religious of St Vincent de Paul (Religiousi di San Vincenzo de' Paoli), who in turn gave it up to the Diocese in 1977.
The church was begun in the same year as the parish was founded, and completed in 1937. The architect was Tullio Rossi.
Exterior Edit
Layout and fabric Edit
The edifice is in a simplified neo-Romanesque style, typical of the architect.
The plan is rectangular, with a central nave and aisles of six bays and a sanctuary of one bay leading to a five-sided apse. The aisles are continued to enclose the sanctuary on each side. The fabric is in brick with reinforced concrete elements, and is rendered in a pale grey colour.
There are small square windows in the central nave side walls above the aisles. The sanctuary apse has three windows in each side wall, and the flanking side chapels have the same.
All the roofs are pitched and tiled, the sanctuary roof being slightly lower than the nave one.
The former convent is arranged around a rectangular cloister to the right of the church. A walkway parallel to the right hand aisle has brick arches in the same style as the entrance loggia (see below), and at the far end of this is a campanile. This is a cream-coloured tower with two square sound-holes on either side, one above the other and separated by a white string course, and a pyramidal cap with deep eaves.
The main convent buildings are on the right side of the cloister, and another arched walkway leads to them from the campanile on the far side of the garth.
Façade Edit
The façade has a red brick entrance loggia which occupies the entire width of the church, and has seven arches looking rather like a Roman aqueduct. The roof of this has a single tiled pitch. The bronze double doors, hung in 1989, are chased with figurative scenes from the New Testament.
The frontage above the loggia contains a large round stained-glass window with wheel tracery and a brick frame but is otherwise plain and rendered in light grey.
The otherwise unremarkable set of mild steel railings which delimits the church's property has quotations from the New Testament incorporated into its top and are worth inspecting.
The church stands away from the street, and the courtyard in front of it is attractively paved in a fish-scale pattern.
Interior Edit
The interior has aisle arcades with Greek cross-shaped brick pillars and imposts but no capitals. Above these the central nave side walls have square windows. The pitched and trussed ceiling is of reinforced concrete, made to look like wood.
The walls are painted throughout in yellow, including the apse which has no windows.
The main altar has fine and detailed polychrome marble work in its frontage, and the nave floor is also polychrome.
The parish is rightly proud of the church organ, over the entrance, which was restored in 2001 and is one of the best in a Roman suburban parish church.
Liturgy Edit
Mass is celebrated (October 2017):
Weekdays 7:30, 18:30 (19:00 in summer);
Sundays and Solemnities 8:00, 9:45 (not summer), 11:00, 12:15 (not summer), 18:30 (19:00 in summer), 20:30 (summer).
