Basilica Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello

Festivals and dates

• Feast of the Holy Face: May (in the published CEI programme: 16 May) (Cammino del Volto Santo - programma (CEI, Ufficio nazionale turismo))
• Spring

From the pilgrim of 1506 to the Capuchins

The oldest complete account of the Holy Face is the Relatione Historica written in 1640 by the Capuchin Father Donato da Bomba. It tells how around 1506 a pilgrim nobody had seen before handed a small bundle to the physician Giacom'Antonio Leonelli in front of the church of San Nicola, in the centre of Manoppello, and then vanished without a trace. Leonelli kept the image in his own home, and his family guarded it for about a century.

After inheritance disputes, in 1618 the veil passed to Dr Donat'Antonio De Fabritiis. The Capuchin Father Clemente da Castelvecchio persuaded him not to give it up, trimmed its damaged edges, and Brother Remigio da Rapino mounted it in a frame between two panes of glass. De Fabritiis finally decided to give it to the Capuchins, so that it could be displayed for public veneration.

The present church was built around 1620 at the wish of De Fabritiis himself, by reworking an existing religious complex. On 1 September 2006 Benedict XVI made a private pilgrimage here, and in the same period the shrine received the title of minor basilica.

Sources: Il Santuario | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Il Volto Santo | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Benedetto XVI, Pellegrinaggio al Santuario del Volto Santo a Manoppello (1° settembre 2006)

Seeking the Face

The heart of the devotion is the image itself: a face with open eyes, marked by the features of the Passion yet serene, which devotional tradition associates with the veil of Veronica, the cloth on which the face of Christ is said to have remained imprinted. Beyond historical interpretations and studies, the shrine presents the veil above all as a gaze that invites the pilgrim to stop and pray.

The shrine's motto takes up the psalm 'Your face, Lord, do I seek'. The same verse is at the centre of Benedict XVI's address in Manoppello: the Pope called the place suited to meditating on the mystery of divine love by contemplating an icon of the Holy Face, and recalled that the Capuchins have cared for it for centuries.

Every year the shrine welcomes parishes, religious communities, associations, schools and groups from Italy and abroad.

Sources: Il Santuario | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Il Volto Santo | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Pellegrinaggi | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Benedetto XVI, Pellegrinaggio al Santuario del Volto Santo a Manoppello (1° settembre 2006)

The veil above the high altar

The Holy Face is displayed at the centre of the basilica, above the high altar. It is imprinted on a very fine, transparent veil mounted between two panes of glass: the transparency of the fabric is one of the features that have prompted curiosity and study for centuries.

The shrine stands on a rise just outside the town, with the Maiella in the background. In the Manoppello area, alongside the basilica, the shrine's website points to the abbey of Santa Maria d'Arabona as the other main religious site of the territory.

Sources: Il Santuario | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Il Volto Santo | Volto Santo di Manoppello

The May feast and the Walk

The feast of the Holy Face falls in May and is marked by a traditional procession linking the parish church in the old town to the shrine, where a solemn Mass is celebrated and the relic is displayed for the veneration of pilgrims.

The Walk of the Holy Face is tied to the feast: a route on foot, by mountain bike or on horseback that starts from St Peter's Square and, partly following the ancient Via Tiburtina Valeria, crosses Lazio and Abruzzo to Manoppello, in the footsteps of the pilgrim who is said to have brought the veil from Rome in 1506.

Sources: Cammino del Volto Santo - programma (CEI, Ufficio nazionale turismo)

Visiting the shrine

The basilica is on Via Cappuccini, on the edge of Manoppello, in the province of Pescara. Life at the shrine is shaped by the liturgical celebrations, the sacrament of Reconciliation and the welcome of pilgrims provided by the Capuchins.

Groups can announce their arrival in advance, ask for a guided visit and request the celebration of a Mass, also in a foreign language; a request counts as confirmed only after the shrine's office has replied.

Sources: Il Santuario | Volto Santo di Manoppello · Pellegrinaggi | Volto Santo di Manoppello

Walks that reach it