The church of the Sacred Heart was consecrated in 1935. The plan had taken shape in the mid twenties out of two concrete facts: the Josephite house in Canelli held many seminarians, and too many faithful were by then attending services in the community's small chapel. In Canelli they call it Santa Chiara, because it was wanted by the Josephite community, whose mother house in Asti stood in the old convent of Santa Chiara.
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Responsibility for the building and for finding the money fell, by informal routes, on father Simone Marsero of the Oblates of Saint Joseph: no document exists that ever gave him the task. It was he who entrusted the design to canon Thea, architect of the diocese of Acqui, who relied on local craftsmen, from bricklayers to stucco workers, while the execution went to the Torchio firm of Tigliole d'Asti.
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The building process started in 1932, and on 10 January of that year the start of works was publicly announced to the townspeople; the Corriere di Canelli followed the site regularly. Inside the foundation stone was walled a parchment dated 5 November 1933 with the names of the pope, the bishop of Acqui, the Duce and the church's godparents: the metal cylinder holding it sits at the foot of the left pillar carrying the dome above the presbytery.
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The inauguration was set for 16 June 1935, before the local authorities, and during the service the telegram sent by cardinal Eugenio Pacelli on behalf of pope Pius XI was read out. Pacelli would become pope a few years later: it is the kind of detail that makes a provincial church a document of its time rather than a monument.
