THE CHURCH OF PRAYER AND DEATH IN ROME IS OPEN!

In advance of my Rome Halloween Pilgrimage, a trip to the Church of Prayer and Death at Via Giulia 262 gave me some very good news, the Church is now OPEN from 3 to 6 P.M. Monday through Saturday, and from 10 to 12 Noon P.M. Sunday mornings with Mass at 10 A.M. Sunday mornings.  

The Church standing here now was built in 1734, or rather rebuilt from the original Church built in 1575 by the Confraternity of Prayer and Death.  8,600 bodies have been buried here from 1572 to 1896 by the Confraternity of the Good Death or aka the Confraternity of Prayer and Death, formed in 1572 to bury the poor, discarded bodies of the dead, abandoned and rotting in the streets, fields and Tiber River.  This Confraternity built the Churches.  It is currently supported by an Archconfraternity.

Originally the Church had 3 underground tunnels connecting it to the Tiber River, in which it would store bodies awaiting burial.  Those tunnels eroded over time with flooding and in 1886 with the building of the river walls.  The Church also had several underground crypts of bones, but flooding took them all but one.  Only one crypt remains and it is open to visitors.  The original Church also had a cemetery in its backyard facing the Tiber River, but flooding washed that away too.

The Confraternity is still active today, praying for the dead who have no one to pray for them.









Sandra Panici, The Roman Pilgrim in Person 

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