Chiesa di Santa Maria Consolatrice

Built in the years 1942-1945 on a slope of the hill around which the district is located, it suffered extensive damage during construction due to the Allied bombing of Rome in 1943 and 1944.

On 14 July 1945, the construction work having been completed, from the little chapel that had existed for a decade in the adjoining building where the friars of the basilica of St Laurence Outside the Walls officiated at Sunday mass for the faithful of the neighbourhood, the venerated image of Mary Consoler (a copy of the original exhibited in the Turin shrine of the same name) was carried in procession to the new church. On the same day, the church was blessed by the vicegerent Monsignor Luigi Traglia. The church had been erected as a parish on the previous 21 May with the decree of the Cardinal Vicar Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani Pastoris vigilantis, taking the parish territory from that of the basilica of San Lorenzo itself, which at the time extended from the San Lorenzo district to Settecamini.

The first parish priest Carlo Maccari, later archbishop of Ancona-Osimo, started a tradition that saw a large number of priests who passed within his walls become prominent figures in the Church: Subsequent parish priests were Giovanni Canestri (cardinal and former archbishop of Genoa) and Ennio Appignanesi (bishop of Castellaneta, Matera-Irsina, Potenza-Muro Lucano and Marsico Nuovo, vice-gerent), while vice-parish priests included Massimo Giustetti (bishop of Biella), Giuseppe Mani (archbishop of Cagliari) and Francesco Camaldo (dean of papal master of ceremonies).

Cardinal title since 1975, following the death of the first titular Joseph Rakotomalala (Archbishop of Antananarivo), in 1977 the Archbishop of Munich-Freising Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, who has always maintained close ties with the parish, was appointed titular cardinal of the church of Santa Maria Consolatrice al Tiburtino. After his election, the Pope chose Santa Maria Consolatrice for his first visit to a parish, on 18 December 2005, following previous papal visits to the parish by Pope Paul VI (1964) and Pope John Paul II (1995). Currently, the titular Cardinal is His Eminence Cardinal Philippe N. Ouédraogo, Metropolitan Archbishop of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.