Chiesa Nostra Signora di Guadalupe e San Filippo

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and San Felipe on Via Aurelia is the national church of Mexico.It was built between 1955 and 1958 to a design by architect Gianni Mazzocca and was consecrated by Cardinal Vicar Clemente Micara on 12 December 1958.The church is a parish seat, established on 22 September 1960 by decree of Cardinal Vicar Clemente Micara, and entrusted to the Legionaries of Christ, who are its owners. On 15 January 1991, Pope John Paul II elevated it to the dignity of a minor basilica.It is the seat of the cardinal title of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Philip Martyr in Via Aurelia, instituted by Pope John Paul II on 28 June 1991.The martyr is St. Philip of Jesus, born Felipe de las Casas (Mexico City, 1572 - Nagasaki, 5 February 1597), a Franciscan monk, missionary and Mexican saint; he was the first native saint of Mexico to be canonised, therefore also called a Mexican protomartyr.The building with a mixture of styles represents a period of transition to modern architecture, whose techniques are used, but without abandoning the canons of tradition.The façade, with a neo-Romanesque profile showing a division into three naves, the central one markedly higher, has a tripartite portal with three parabolic arches, all concentrated in the central body and surmounted by an octagonal rose window. The large smooth surface is given movement by the travertine lozenges of the cladding, arranged alternately in rows and diagonally.Inside, the naves are divided by slender pillars, on which rest reinforced concrete beams that, with a rather daring structural solution, leave a void in place of the capital and bend at an angle both laterally to support the roofing of the outer nave and longitudinally to support the upper walls, in which windows open. The presbytery is separated from the nave by a round triumphal arch; this repeats the arch of the apse, which in turn frames a mosaic depicting seven stars arranged in a radial pattern around the effigy of Our Lady of Guadalupe. At the base of the sunburst is the tabernacle.