Chiesa del Carmine, Messina

The pressures of the faithful people that flocked, attracted by the admirable life of those monks, induced the Carmelites to relocate and move almost at the mouth of that river San Michele.

To repair this slander, Honorable Joseph Toscano wrote in the newspaper "Il Risveglio": «Simply for the truth, the undersigned Giuseppe Toscano, former municipal councilor of the hapless Messina testify that immediately following the disaster, I met with three friars of the convent of the Carmine, almost naked, already worked to rescue the buried alive and, although they also just escaped the wreckage and free of any instrument, by sheer force of their arms drew to rescue as many as they could.

Sensing devotion to the Holy Virgin of Carmel, the Archbishop of Messina, D'Arrigo, wanted to entrust the Carmelites one of the first shack-churches built after the disaster, in Via Salandra.

The Archbishop D'Arrigo asked Father Alessi, the prior of the convent, to lend, and the pastor, to concede that his parish would pass to the Carmelites at his death, which occurred in October 1918.

In fact in 1926, thanks to the paternal involvement of Archbishop Angelo Paino, the successor of D'Arrigo, the project was obtained for the new church and convent by the renowned architect Cesare Bazzani.

The central compartment has an octagonal shape and is covered by a dome that is in line with Via Nicola Fabrizi and Corso Cavour, to whom all the building, seen from a distance, gives the impression of a terminal point.

On the main altar is an eighteenth-century statue depicting the Madonna of Carmel, with the Infant Jesus in her arms, in the act of turning the holy scapular to St. Simon Stock.