Tree growing without soil on the wall of church built as the Virgin Mary said. If you did not see it with your own eyes, you would not believe it. A real mystery they write on the portal “Leggo” from Italy. There is a cypress growing on a wall: a prodigy, which we can see in the Minor Papal Basilica of the Madonna del Colle in Lenola, province of Latina. In fact, on the outside walls of this church, there is a cypress tree, still alive and healthy since 1628: originally there were two trees, but over the years only one has survived (the other was destroyed by lightning in 2002), although it is not clear how this is possible.
The Milanese artist Raffaello Franco completed The Basilica in 1628: he nailed a sturdy cypress branch to the main cornice along with another similar shrub at the completion of the work. Together with the myrtle festoons, these two branches served to embellish the façade for the inauguration: but after a few days, when undoing the decoration, the workmen found them mysteriously attached to the concrete, although without roots. For centuries they have mysteriously resisted bad weather and drought.
Converted through the mediation of the Virgin
The artist built the Basilica after the miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary to Gabriel Mattei, a 23-year-old orphan from Lenola, who on September 14, 1602 got into an argument with an old man who reproached him for disturbing the solemn vespers of the Madonna. So Gabriel, filled with hatred, thought of killing the sick old man and asked two friends for help. That night the Virgin appeared to him and diverted him from the murderous plan. She also invited him to look for her image in Colle, among the vegetation. There, she asked him to build a temple in her honor.
The young man converted and traveled through Europe under the name of Friar Deo Gratias. For most of his life he tried to fulfill Our Lady’s wish to find the means to build the temple. In 1610 the first part of the Sanctuary was inaugurated, and in the following years it was completed. From 2015 it became a minor papal basilica.
Tree growing without soil on the wall of church built as the Virgin Mary said. Read the original Spanish version here
