Santa Gianna Beretta Molla is a 21st century subsidiary parish church located at Via Amadeo Bocchi 169 in Acilia Sud, just south of the Via del Mare.
The dedication is to St Gianna Beretta Molla. She was a doctor of medicine who chose to die rather than have an abortion after complications during her pregnancy.
History[]
The local parish is San Giorgio in Acilia, which is in the charge of the Canossian family of religious. The western part of Acilia Sud is still under development, and the locality west of Via di Macchia Saponaria was provided with a new social centre in 2016. This includes a church, and is administered by the Canossian Daughters of Charity.
Exterior[]
Social centre[]
The social centre comprises two parallel blocks either side of a rectangular courtyard, joining onto the church at the back. The fabric is in reinforced concrete with pink brick.
The blocks begin identically with a single-storey flat-roofed section, in pink brick with deed eaves in concrete, two doorways in the front and a row of five square windows down each side. On the left there follows a single-storey main section of ten bays, each bay having an arch on each side with square brick piers and a deep, shallowly curved archivolt. The archivolts run together to form an extension of the eaves, and the roofline is hence wavy. So is the actual roof. Looking onto the courtyard, the first and last arches are doorways but the other eight are each infilled with a low brick wall and a large window. The arches on the other side form the arcade of a covered passageway.
The right hand block has an identical first storey, but is two-storey over the further nine arches. A second arcade of arches forms this storey, again fronting a wavy roof.
Church[]
The actual church is semi-circular, and amounts to an enormous apse with a semi-dome. The far end of the courtyard is occupied by a squat tower in blank brickwork, which has a very large round window near ground level. To the right above this is a small vertical rectangular window with fenestration in the form of a cross. The flat roof bears a pyramid, rather like a very dumpy spire.
The last bay of each block is an entrance lobby, and access from the courtyard is through the doors in the last arches of the ground floor arcades. Outside the same thing happens -the last arch in each arcade is a church entrance.
The semi-circular wall of the church is in pink brick with deep concrete eaves, the same height as the first storeys of the parallel blocks. A continuous row of horizontal rectangular windows is tucked under the eaves, the windows being separated by dumpy brick piers. The semi-dome is in grey, and has a segment-shaped skylight at the top where it meets the tower. The wall is continued either side of the tower to meet the side entrances, creating two flat-roofed spaces.
Interior[]
The curved wall is in pink brick on the inside, too. The roof is in wood, having radial beams meeting at a concrete collar curving round the segment-shaped skylight. The sectors are infilled with rafters and planking.
The sanctuary is under the tower. It is flanked by a pair of splayed brick walls.
Liturgy[]
Mass is celebrated:
Weekdays 8:30;
Sundays and Solemnities 10:30.