San Giustino is a mid 20th century parish and titular church at Viale Alessandrino 144, in the south of the Alessandrino quarter and just north of the Via Casilina. Pictures of the church at Wikimedia Commons are here.
The dedication is to St Justin Martyr.
History[]
The parish was erected in 1952. The new church was designed by Francesco Fornari, and completed in 1953.
In 1965, the administration of the parish was taken over by priests of the diocese of Bergamo.
The church was made titular in 2003, and the present cardinal priest is John-Baptist Pham Nimh Man.
Exterior[]
The church is in a stripped-down neo-Romanesque style. The plan is traditional, being an unaisled rectangular nave of five bays with a five-sided apse attached, and two little five-sided external chapels on the left hand side. The roofs of all of these are pitched and tiled. The nave side walls have rectangular window with mullions in the form of a Latin cross.
However the façade is unusual. This is because the architect Fornari placed the campanile on the left hand side of the frontage, making the façade asymmetrical. The campanile is a tower which rises much higher than the nave gable, has a rectangular soundhole in each face and a gabled saddleback cap. The architect was inspired in the placing of the campanile by San Giovanni a Porta Latina.
The external walls of the church are rendered in a peach colour. The campanile has its first storey clad in what looks like dark grey stone tiles, separated from the rest (in peach) by a wide stripe in cream. This stripe is continued across the frontage and over a matching zone of grey tiling on the other side.
To the right of the campanile is an external loggia with a single-pitched tiled roof occupying the rest of the width of the façade. The portals comprise an arched central entranceway with two square pillars in dark grey, and with a pair of rectangular openings flanking it (this arrangement is called a serliana). The cream band runs along the top edges of the rectangles, and highlights the semicircular archivolt. The walls of the loggia beyond these openings are also in dark grey. The actual entrance door, in the loggia, has a marble doorcase with a dedicatory inscription on the lintel.
Above the loggia is another rectangular window, with mullions in the form of a Latin cross. The gabled church frontage is otherwise a blank wall, with a picture of the Madonna and Child in a rather naïve style above the window.
Interior[]
The interior is very simple, being a single nave with apse. The ceiling is planked and trussed, and it and the upper nave walls are in white. The wall around the apse arch, and the lower nave walls below a horizontal relief string course are in cream. The nave windows have stained glass, the lower two panels being larger with figures of saints and the upper smaller ones having eucharistic symbols.
The apse contains a figurative mosaic of the Apotheosis of St Justin Martyr, flanked by symbols of the Evangelists.
Liturgy[]
Church[]
Mass is celebrated (parish website, May 2018):
Weekdays 9:00 (not summer), 18:30 (19:00 summer Saturdays);
Sundays and Solemnities 7:30, 8:45 (not summer), 10:00, 11:30, 18:30 (19:00 summer).
(Here, "summer" runs from the third Sunday in June to that in September.)
There is Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament:
Every Wednesday, 17:30 to 18:30;
The second Thursday of the month for vocations from 17:30 to 21:00;
The first Friday of the month from 10:00 to 22:00.
Vespers is celebrated on Sundays and Solemnities half an hour before the evening Mass.
Convent chapels[]
Mass at two (formerly three) private convent chapels can be attended by the public. These are:
Cappella Ancelle dell' Immcolata, Via del Grano 52/A.
Mass is on weekdays at 8:00 in summer only; in winter, at 7:30 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; on Sundays and Solemnities, at 9:30 (8:45 summer).
Cappella Figlie della Carità del Preziosissimo Sangue, Via delle Spighe 1.
Mass on weekdays at 8:00 in summer only; in winter, at 7:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; on Sundays and Solemnities, 9:00 throughout the year.
Cappella Suore Francescane Santa Filippa Mareri, Via delle Nespole 91/B.
The chapel here is no longer a public Mass centre.