The church of San Giuseppe Lavoratore is a parish in Alcamo born of one priest's determination, Father Bartolomeo Palumbo. On 30 April 1944, barefoot and holding a cross, followed by many of the faithful, he went to the Balatelle quarter, then on the outskirts, to the land donated by Annunziata Macaluso, widow of the chemist Fazio: he planted the cross there and from then on said Mass every Sunday on a makeshift altar. The Bishop of Mazara had given permission to build the church in February 1944; it was founded in 1946 to a design by the engineer Giuseppe Russo.
What to see
The façade is in Romanesque style, the interior has a single nave with a coffered ceiling. The wooden statue of Saint Joseph with the Child in his arms is by Giuseppe Di Caro of Palermo, from 1952: the saint's mantle is covered in gold, the clothes in silver. Behind the high altar are a trumpeting angel and a musician angel chrome-plated by the Alcamo surrealist painter Gino Patti.
On the right altar is the wooden Our Lady of Fatima by Giuseppe Stuflesser of Ortisei, from 1949; on the left the Christ the King by Luigi Santifaller, from 1954, beneath which is the sarcophagus with the remains of Father Palumbo, moved here on 22 October 2013 by popular demand.
Visiting
In 1947 the basement was completed and the church became a parish by a bull of 3 May; to finish it Father Palumbo collected offerings even in kind, wheat, eggs, pulses, flour, which he also used to help the poor. Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
On 1 May, in the quarter the people of Alcamo call San Ciusippuzzu, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker combines a procession, music, theatre and bicycle races.
