SANTA ROSALIA, PREGA PER NOI!

The most direct approach to the top of Monte Pellegrino and the Santuario di Santa Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo, is the footpath used by pilgrims (usually barefoot or on their knees!) to ascend 428 meters above sea level on their annual September devotional trek to venerate the saint.  "Santa Rosalia, prega per noi!"  "Saint Rosalie, pray for us!"  

The sanctuary itself is a small group of buildings located in a cavern converted into a chapel in 1625.  

 

The cave contains a statue of the saint, 

an elaborate intarsia marble altar with startling neon blue lighting, and the

pièce de résistance:  a bronze and glass sarcophagus which holds Santa Rosalia’s reclining likeness dressed in a golden embossed metal gown, plus a silver monstrance containing (they claim) her tooth and a chip off her old block. 

Santa Rosalia and Monstrance (right front)

The rest of Rosalia's remains are buried in a side chapel of the Palermo Cathedral.  She's in good company.  Also buried there are the remains of King Roger II, the first Norman king of Sicily; Roger's daughter, Constance de Hauteville, and her husband Emperor Henry VI Hohenstaufen, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; their son Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, King of Sicily and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and his wife Constance of Aragon.

But back to Santa Rosalia's cave.  The water seeping out of the cave walls is held to be miraculous and is carefully routed in “it came from outer space”-looking sheet metal conduits so as not to drench the faithful (see neon blue altar photo above). 

In the ante room just outside the cave proper is an amazing display case of ex votos, motor cycle helmets, a life preserver, an anchor, photos of seriously ill and/or departed loved ones, plus a plaque indicating that Goethe slept here.  (Just kidding, but he was at the sanctuary to pay his Germanic respects.  No doubt he also stopped in at the Cathedral to give his best to the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperors.)   

Ex Votos Used to Heal and Cure Various Body Parts

And, of course, you exit the cave via the gift shop, where you can buy refrigerator magnets, key chains, votive candles, post cards, other assorted tchotchkes, as well as a tasty amaro (herbal digestif), all emblazoned with the image of Santa Rosalia.

Rosalia was born in 1130, the same year that King Roger II was crowned at the Palermo Cathedral.  She was the daughter of Norman nobility who claimed a lineage to Charlemagne.  She was deeply devout and to avoid an arranged marriage and the concomitant loss of her virginity, she escaped her family to live as a hermit in a cave on Monte Pellegrino, where she died alone in 1166.  (Wait!  Didn’t someone send out a search party?  The cave is just on the outskirts of town.)  Per Wikipedia:

Tradition says that she was led to the cave by two angels.  On the cave wall she wrote, "I, Rosalia, daughter of Sinibald, Lord of Roses, and Quisquina, have taken the resolution to live in this cave for the love of my Lord, Jesus Christ."  In 1624, a plague beset Palermo.  During this hardship Saint Rosalia appeared first to a sick woman, then to a hunter, to whom she indicated where her remains were to be found.  She ordered him to bring her bones to Palermo and have them carried in procession through the city.  The hunter climbed the mountain and found her bones in the cave as described.  He did what she had asked in the apparition.  After her remains were carried around the city three times, the plague ceased.  [In gratitude for this miracle,] Saint Rosalia was venerated as the patron saint of Palermo, and a sanctuary was built in the cave where her remains were discovered.

Santa Rosalia at Cathedral

So there you have it.  Each July the Palermitani celebrate their patron saint with a nighttime procession led by the Archbishop and Mayor of Palermo that begins on July 14^th at the Cathedral, passes ever-so-slowly down Corso Vittorio Emanuele (the main street that links the Palazzo Reale, the seat of the Sicilian parliament, to the sea), until it reaches the Foro Italico along the water’s edge, where it erupts in a massive, deafening fireworks display.  

The center of the procession is the ten-meter-high carro (a wagon built in a different style every year) that carries the statue of Santa Rosalia down the Corso to the Foro Italico.  It is as long as it is high and was pulled in the 17^th c. by elephants, later by oxen, and more recently by a dozen or so very strong men.  The carro—a chariot, or a boat, or whatever theme has been chosen that year--is richly decorated with real and artificial roses, Rosalia's namesake flower; plaster angels and cherubs; and other sacred and secular symbols decorated in gold and painted in primaries or pastels.   

Young and old from various neighborhood companies around the city will have practiced elaborate choreographies and musical accompaniments with dramatic lighting effects all year in preparation for the procession.  While the haze and din of the fireworks are still a vivid memory, the festival comes to a close the next day, July 15^th, when the relics of the saint take a turn around town in a silver urn and Masses are celebrated in her honor in churches throughout the city.  At the end of the festivities, the reliquary urn is returned to the Cathedral, where it is blessed by the Archbishop of Palermo and safely stored away.  

And that’s it—until next year--when it starts all over again.

Keep it real!

Marilyn