Three bronze bells, dating back to the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries, were delivered by the Carabinieri of the Provincial Command and the NOE to Monsignor Fortunato Morrone, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Reggio Calabria-Bova diocese, at the conclusion of a series of checks and scientific verifications. The three bells, as the analyzes carried out attest, they were lost due to the earthquake that struck the cities of Reggio Calabria and Messina on the night of 28 December 1908when over eighty thousand people died between the two sides of the Strait.
The bell from the 17th century was identified by the carabinieri of the provincial command of Reggio Calabria, while the other two, dating back to the 16th and 1800s, were found following an investigation by the carabinieri of the provincial NOE in a company in the city , While they were about to be merged. The subsequent investigations, entrusted to the Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, based in Cosenza, in synergy with the findings that emerged from the Diocesan Archive of Reggio Calabria, made it possible to establish, without any doubt, that the bells were those lost in the earthquake of 1908. The finds will be placed in the diocesan museum named after the former archbishop, Monsignor Aurelio Sorrentino, located in the architectural complex of the Archbishopric.