Santa Maria Madre della Misericordia, Roma

Santa Maria Madre della Misericordia is a church on Via dei Gordiani, in Rome’s Prenestino-Labicano district. Its twentieth-century design is by architect Tullio Rossi. Notice the plain silhouette of a gabled house: the facade carries a tiled roof and a projecting, porch-like entrance.

That domestic outline gives the building a restrained, welcoming character. Inside, the church takes the form of a long rectangle beneath exposed wooden trusses, with no artworks. It has served as a parish since July fifteenth, nineteen fifty-two.

Its early parish priests came from Verona’s Congregation of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence, founded by Don Calabria; diocesan clergy later took charge. Pope John Paul the Second visited in May nineteen eighty-three.