Sanctuary of our Lady of Valleverde (Bovino)

SANCTUARY
OF
OUR LADY OF VALLEVERDE

  (BOVINO)

Along the path that leads me to Bovino, in this short vacation that I allowed myself to escape the hot sun of a torrid summer toward the hope of a breath of fresh air in the sub-Apennines of Daunia, I find an indication that leads to Sanctuary of  Valleverde.

But yes, it costs nothing, it is along the road, about 4 miles from my goal (Bovino, to be precise) ... why do not we stop?

I find myself in front of a rather modern-looking church, triangular with a bold spire, but, how I will discover later , with a long historical background.

A legend (?) says that in the spring of 1266 a farmer named Nicolò dreamed of being in the forest of  Mengaga to collect firewood  with some friends. And there appeared a woman who asked him some water from a fount.  Nicholas gave it to her and asked the lady who she was. She said to be the "Mother of the Son of God ", who had left a country where men were abandoned to sin and had come to protect the people of Puglia and especially Bovino.

She told him to go to the Bishop to make them build a sanctuary to the name of "Santa Maria di Valleverde".

 

Upon waking, Nicholas did nothing. The Madonna returned to him in a dream for four times, but Niccolò not decide ... so he was punished to become lame. He recovered when he decided to go to the Bishop, who welcomed the desire of the Mother of God and asked to indicate the exact point where to build the Church.

The Madonna appeared in a dream to Nicolò and designed, using little bundles of grass, the perimeter of the Church, the place where to place the altar and the doors. In the morning the bishop, the clergy and people went and found the bundles placed in this way.

Go to the city and tell to the bishop, to the clergy and to the citizens that...I want...in this place a church with the title of Our Lady of Valleverde

The Church was built in four months and there began pilgrimages. At his side was built a monastery where settled before the Cistercian monks , and then the Friars Minor. At the beginning of the 900 Passionists  restored Church and Monastery.

Inside was placed in 1965, after a scrupulous restoration, the ancient and exquisite Madonna and Child from the late thirteenth century.

But what I  see now with my eyes is a new sanctuary, where the story is a little recovered, but the architecture is modern. In fact everything has been rebuilt.

The foundation stone of the new sanctuary took place on May 23, 1966, and there also participated Karol Wojtyla, then Archbishop of Cracow, which  returned in May 1987 in the guise of Pope John Paul II to bless it.  In June of that year it  was consecrated.

The old church, which remained in operation until then, stopped functioning.

SOME IMAGES OF THE SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF VALLEVERDE

 

I now leave this little discovery to you ...  the travel in the sub-Apennines has just begun!