San Gregorio Magno alla Magliana Nuova is a 20th century parish and titular church at Piazza Certaldo 85, in the suburb of Magliana Nuova. This is part of the Portuense district to the south-west of Trastevere. Pictures of the church at Wikimedia Commons are here.
Name[]
The title given is actually that of the cardinalate. The church is usually referred to by the diocese simply as San Gregorio Magno, which can cause confusion with San Gregorio Magno al Celio. However, the latter has never been a parish church. The patron saint is Gregory the Great.
History[]
The church was designed by Aldo Aloysi, and built in 1963. Unusually, the parish was set up at the same time so the parishioners did not have to wait for their church.
The church was made titular in 2001, and so far the only titular priest has been Geraldo Majella Agnelo.
Exterior[]
The plan of the main edifice is square, but there are two extensions, of decreasing height towards the street, on the north side where the entrance is.
The building is a box of white concrete in an unapologetic Brutalist style, with each side wall made up from seven enormous vertical rectangular concrete panels set side by side, and with their top edges projecting above the flat roof. The ends of the roofbeams project out from in between the slabs, making a row of corbels high up on each side.
At the entrance, the street façade is actually the front wall of a crypt, and has a canopy supported by concrete pilasters running up the walls, then diagonally up the underside of the canopy then up the fascia to terminate before the top edge. A representation of Our Lady of Lourdes is on this wall. The actual entrance narthex is accessed by a staircase on the left side of this crypt wall, which opens onto the roof of the crypt. The entrance itself is at the right side of a wide recess with two small square windows on the left. There is a wide main door, and two narrower doors either side flanked by square concrete pilasters numbering four in total.
There is a tall, thin concrete campanile on the left corner of the main building at its entrance, on a square plan and with a vertical rectangular aperture at the top like the eye of a needle. The bells are hung in a cage in this. In front of the campanile is a concrete pillar topped by a statue of Christ.
Interior[]
As might be expected, the interior is as Brutalist as the exterior. The same raw concrete slabs making up the exterior walls are on show as the interior ones. However, the wall behind the altar has a pair of slit stained glass windows in between slabs, and these give a touch of colour.
There is a painted wooden statue of the risen Christ suspended on this wall, and below this is an octagonal tabernacle in gilded metal.
Very recently the statue was made the centrepiece of a large figurative mosaic from the Vatican workshops, which covers the wall. It is surrounded with stylistic depictions of fire and water, and these are flanked by representations in a neo-Byzantine style of the Madonna and Child, and St Gregory. Below these are two groups of the praying faithful, and below these in turn is an inverted semi-circular arc broken by the tabernacle. This arc bears the first strophe of the hymn Veni creator spiritus in Gregorian chant (traditionally invented by St Gregory, which is why it's here).
The ceiling is coffered in squares, in raw concrete with the shuttering marks showing.
Liturgy[]
Mass is celebrated, according to the Diocese (May 2018):
Weekdays 8:00 and 18:00;
Sundays and Solemnities 8:00, 10:00, 11:30 and 18:00.
External links[]
(The parish has no website.)