On Maria's island you can feel her embrace

Lampedusa is theMary's Island and every corner speaks of her. On this island Christians and Muslims pray together for the victims of shipwrecks and the missing.

Lampedusa is known as Maria's island. Her gaze is present everywhere, on the Favaloro pier, where the small migrant boats arrive and the castaways are disembarked, in the residents' homes of Lampedusa, where many families gather at least once a week to recite the rosary, in statue of the Virgin located on the seabed, visited by numerous divers and even among rocks of Cala Madonna, where a statuette of Mary has been placed in the sea cave that runs along the beach.

Sister Ausilia, Salesian nun who dedicates her days to assisting the inhabitants and migrants of the island, says that thelast Saturday of the month, at sunset, in the church of San Gerlando, the Rosary is recited with great participation of the residents of Lampedusa. But Mary's home is the sanctuary of Madonna of Porto Salvo. The statue of the island's protector is housed in a small church that looks like an Orthodox temple, dominated by blue and white colours.

This suggestive place is the symbol ofintegration and interreligious dialogue in this corner of land between Africa and Europe.

The history of the sanctuary of the Island of Mary

The particularity of the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lampedusa is precisely that which Muslims and Christians they pray together, united by dialogue and prayer. This happens every 3 October, anniversary of shipwreck occurred in 2013 off the coast of the island of a Libyan boat which caused the death of 368 people and 20 missing. Many gods survivors or relatives of the victims they gather with the residents of Lampedusa in the sanctuary to commemorate that terrible tragedy.

Una legend popular story goes that around 1600, during an incursion by Turkish corsairs on the Ligurian coasts, a certain Andrea Anfossi of Castellaro Ligure. Taken to Africa, he was forced to do forced labor in a privateer prison which, one day, landed in Lampedusa for a stop to stock up on water and wood.

Here Andrea managed to run away and took refuge in a cave where he found a painting of the Madonna and Child and of Saint Catherine Martyr. The fugitive dug a tree trunk, he set out to sea and using the painting as a sail, he managed to land on the Ligurian coast. As a gesture of gratitude she decided to build a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Lampedusa right in Castellaro, in the province of Imperia.