An ancient and ever strong devotion to Madonna of the Chain which is renewed every year on the first Sunday of September for the community of Roccalumera. The ancient simulacrum has returned to parade through the streets of the town on the Ionian coast carried on the shoulders of the bearers, accompanied by the devotees. At the head of the procession led by Father Salvatore Arcoracithe mayor Joseph Lombard and father Sergio TrifilettiThe celebrations were enriched by many convivial evenings organized by the festival committee and pastoral workers, which involved adults and children.
The simulacrum of the Madonna of the Chain – patron saint and protector of the Baglio-Ficara district, as well as patron saint of the vicariate forane of Roccalumera-Santa Teresa di Riva together with Saint Basil the Great – is kept in the church of the same name, dating back to 1893 (first nucleus) and 1937 (second nucleus).
completed in 1983, built with commitment and enthusiasm by the inhabitants of the Baglio and Ficarra neighborhoods, who at the time participated in religious functions in the small church of the Santissimo Crocifisso and “felt the need to have their own church”, immediately thinking of dedicating it to the Vergine della Catena. It was enlarged and deeply renovated both inside and out in 1937: the structure of the new church is a Latin cross, with a coffered ceiling with rosettes in the center and artistic stained glass windows. The temple and the parish hall house numerous paintings and sculptures of great value, including the venerated nineteenth-century effigy of the Madonna della Catena, which dominates the high altar of the church, aImmaculate of the twentieth century, a Saint Joseph of the 19th century, aSorrowful of 1907 with an eighteenth-century halo, a Madonna with Child of 1906, a second statue of the Madonna della Catena made in the first half of the twentieth century. After a well-attended novena, the venerated effigy of the Virgin is carried triumphantly in procession on the first Sunday of September, her feast day, gathering the faithful from all over the Ionian area.
By the will of the parish priest Don Arcoraci, a space has been set up inside the parish church a museum of vestments and sacred furnishings and one library named after the late Monsignor Giuseppe Scarcellafrom Roccalumera, who passed away in 2013 and was vicar general of the archbishops Francesco Fasola and Ignazio Cannavò.