The Mysteries of Santa Croce

The Basilica of Santa Croce let us enter the world of Celestine V, who resigned from the papal office stating his desire to return to his pre-papal life.

The silence and the dark lead us through an experience of inner research. The dim light coming from outside reveals the chapels, the paintings, the ceiling, the cross, and the dome.

Light and music draw our attention towards the chapels which, illuminated gradually, reveal their beauty and their deep significance.

Like a wayfarer, Celestine V searches his way to the New Jerusalem, the path to purity, represented by the stylised lilies on the keystones and capitals.

In the chapel of Saint Francis of Paola, a Baroque masterpiece sculpted by Francesco Antonio Zimbalo, twelve panels depict some episodes from the life of the Saint.

Only one panel is illuminated: Liberation from Demonic Possession, where a possessed woman is at the mercy of evil forces.

The painting of Saint Francis of Paola by Alessandro Calabrese is gradually revealed.

On a capital in the transept, the light illuminates the figure of Melchisedek, protector of Abraham, David’s predecessor, king of Salem and priest of El Elyon, whose name means “king of righteousness”.

Light and music draw our attention towards two couples of spiral columns and, at the centre, the painting of the Trinity, an early sixteenth-century masterpiece by Gianserio Strafella from Copertino.

We are now inside the Christian mystery: the cross with the Relics of the True Cross, in the seventeenth-century Chapel of the Relics realised by the sculptor Cesare Penna.

The light gradually fills the Basilica and the beauty of Santa Croce is revealed in its entirety.