In the Ligurian valleys hamlets took centuries to obtain their own parish, and often never managed it. Cardini took three years. Work on building the church began in 1673 and in 1676 cardinal Giulio Spinola made it an independent rectory: a case of speed almost never seen in this matter.
What to see
The method, in all likelihood, was this: first you build, then you ask. A community that pays for the building itself and hands it over finished puts the diocesan authority before a fait accompli, and the paperwork moves fast. Those who asked before building ended up waiting generations.
In its very first years the church was a chapel of ease of the parish of Santa Vittoria in Lobiola, on the other slope, towards Sestri Levante. It became a provostship well into the twentieth century, and at the end of the nineteen-fifties passed from the diocese of Brugnato to that of Chiavari along with the whole vicariate.
Visiting
The church is in via Cardini, in the hamlet of the same name at Casarza Ligure, in the val Petronio; it is a parish church and opens for services. A quarter of an hour.
Our editors' tip
From the forecourt look around and count the bell towers you can see. In a valley of a few thousand people there are a good many, each of a different parish, often a few hundred metres apart. It is not excess devotion: it is the way each cluster of houses claimed the right to count for something.