Lombard bishops concerned about Caravaggio shrine: threatened by industrial expansion

The Regional Council for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage of the Lombardy Bishops’ Conference, a body chaired by Monsignor Corrado Sanguineti, Bishop of Pavia, expresses its concern for the Shrine of Caravaggio, and in particular for the environmental heritage surrounding the Shrine of Santa Maria del Fonte. This is an area that has always been protected, so much so that there are urban planning and landscape constraints in place that have made it possible to preserve the agricultural areas that for six hundred years have surrounded the Sanctuary, becoming one with it. The network of canals, fed by fountains, typical of the area, has also characterized the area, as suggested by the very name of the shrine, which arose on the site of an apparition of Our Lady, near a spring.

“For a number of years,” the Consulta declares, “this heritage has been threatened by initiatives and decisions that seem to disregard the renewed awareness, made by legislators and citizens themselves, on issues of environmental and landscape protection, not considering the centuries-old origin of this monument and the surrounding area.” The council refers in particular to the plan to build a large industrial zone in the municipality of Misano Gera d’Adda, in which a massive logistics hub could be built only about 500 meters away from the shrine. “A project that worries various subjects,” adds the Council, “as demonstrated by the fact that on Saturday, April 20, a demonstration by the ’Save the Soil’ Coordination, which represents a group of associations, clubs, committees and citizens, will stop in Caravaggio itself.”

“The project of transforming important portions of the territory into industrial or commercial areas, taking them away from agricultural use,” the Consulta explains, “in truth concerns various areas of the Lower Bergamo area and neighboring areas. A process that in recent years has brought the phenomenon of land consumption to very high values, with respect to which the issue of effective planning, regulation and control by the competent institutions assumes central importance, so as to harmonize the different needs (productive, housing, environmental and landscape) in the constant search for the common good.”

The new production settlements around the Caravaggio Shrine would be located on a fragile territory closely linked to a monument that represents a constituent and characterizing element of the entire area, moreover since last May 26 recognized as a regional Shrine, and the subject, since January 2022, of a memorandum of understanding for the preservation and enhancement of cultural assets of religious interest signed between the Lombardy Region and the Lombardy Episcopal Conference. This document emphasized the mutual commitment to the enhancement of the historical and cultural heritage of goods of religious interest and the mutual willingness to protect this heritage. As a result of this, a mutual commitment to the protection, recovery and usability of these assets was enshrined.

“Finally, it is worth noting,” the Consulta concludes, that the “Italian Constitution contains a commitment to environmental protection: in fact, Article 9 provides that the Republic shall protect ’the environment, biodiversity and ecosystems, also in the interest of future generations.’ This commitment is confirmed by the Cultural Heritage Code (Legislative Decree 42/2004), which aims to promote the enhancement and protection of cultural heritage as an expression of the memory of a community and its territories and at the same time a factor in their development. The Code includes among cultural heritage the landscape heritage, which encapsulates the historical, cultural and aesthetic values of a territory (Art. 2). For all these reasons, we believe it is necessary for institutions to take responsibility for regulating these phenomena and assume the protection of realities such as the Santa Maria del Fonte Shrine and its territory. Not only protection of the monument, but also of the environment and landscape that are one with it.”

In the photo, the Sanctuary of Caravaggio

Lombard bishops concerned about Caravaggio shrine: threatened by industrial expansion

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