The mother church of Santa Maria di Portosalvo is at Scoglitti, a hamlet of Vittoria, and is dedicated to Saint Mary of Portosalvo.
What to see
It was built in 1937, a gift of Pope Pius XI, because the eighteenth-century little church of Santa Maria di Portosalvo, made a parish by a decree of 1925 of the Archbishop of Syracuse Giacomo Carabelli, was by now too small for Scoglitti's growing population. The eighteenth-century little church, to tell it from the new one, is now called the «church of San Francesco», although the true patron remains Santa Maria di Portosalvo. The new mother church was completed in May 1937 and consecrated on 23 May by Archbishop Ettore Baranzini, who wanted the patroness's statue to be carried in procession that afternoon from its old little church to the new one; the new bell recalling the event was blessed too.
The interior is a single nave ending in a semicircular apse with the presbytery. It holds the statue of the patroness, the Assunta of Cammarana-Santa Maria di Portosalvo, of 1685, of a cult said to go back to the eighth century, and the miraculous statuette of San Franciscuzzu (Saint Francis of Paola), of the late seventeenth century but found in the sea only in the second half of the nineteenth by some fishermen, on the beach called «do palummaru». Towards the end of the nineteen-seventies the church was radically altered inside: a large mosaic took the place of the neoclassical-Baroque altar and a modern coffered ceiling, much lower than the old one, took away some four or five metres of height.
Visiting
The mother church is at Scoglitti. The eighteenth-century little church, now called «of San Francesco», is a separate building. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The statuette of San Franciscuzzu, found in the sea by some fishermen in the second half of the nineteenth century, is held to be miraculous.
