The Church of the Villaggio della Mercede is a small modern church within the complex built in the 1950s along Via Regina Elena.
The name Our Lady of Mercy (Mercede) comes from the Spanish “merced”, meaning price or ransom. In the Catholic Church the title refers to Our Lady of grace received and of mercy. From the 13th century in Barcelona, an order of friars following the Rule of Saint Augustine, led by Peter Nolasco, set out to free Christian prisoners enslaved by Muslims. The tradition continued over the centuries, and the order kept fighting against all forms of slavery, helping all those who wished to live freely and with dignity. In this spirit, in 1950 Father Ovidio Serafini encouraged the Mercedarian Order in Rome to buy land on Via Regina Elena from the Opera Nazionale Combattenti to create a home for boys without families, from difficult backgrounds and children of prisoners. Here the friar wanted to take them in, educate them and give them the chance to learn a trade. So the “Villaggio della Mercede for prisoners’ children” was born. The Mercedarian friars kept up their work for almost fifty years, preparing many boys for life (from the first 4, the number rose to 146) and setting up workshops and vocational schools in tailoring, ceramics, farming, carpentry and cabinet-making, mechanics and radio and TV repair. The buildings still on site bear witness to this. In the middle, among the workshops near the boys’ lodgings, the friars built a small modern church in red brick, adorned with simple paintings recalling the deeds of the founding Order. Space is limited, so much so that during the popular feast of Our Lady of Mercy on 4 August, helped by fine summer weather, Mass has to be celebrated outdoors. The ceremony ends with a delicate statue of the Virgin being carried to the beach owned by the hotel that bought the property from the friars.
