Chiesa di San Giuseppe da Copertino

The history of the church, now a parish dedicated to St Joseph of Cupertino, has always been linked to the neighbouring parish of St Mark the Evangelist in Agro Laurentino. The latter, in fact, was the first parish founded in this part of the city by the Franciscan friars of Padua, and remained the only one in the area for almost thirty years (from 1950 to 1979).The community of friars had come to take spiritual care of a large group of Julian and Dalmatian refugees, who had escaped the war and arrived in this area in the years 1946 and after, coming from their lands and towns in Istria and Dalmatia (Pula, Rijeka and Zadar), which had passed to Yugoslavia after the war.The first small church in the Julian Village was officially opened as a parish church on 26 March 1950 and was, as mentioned, dedicated to St Mark the Evangelist. It served the entire area that belongs to the present EUR, the Giuliano Village already mentioned, the Cecchignola area, the R.A.I., Castellaccio, Tor di Valle and the Tre Fontane Cave: a very vast and dispersed territory even if, at the time, almost uninhabited.The development of the population, and its new distribution, made it necessary to build another church that would offer less cramped spaces than the one, the only usable one, that existed at the time: in fact, the present church of Saints Peter and Paul at EUR was not yet usable, and even if it had been, it was in any case decentralised in an area where there were only, as reported in the friars' annals, about twenty(!) families.A church was then built in Via dei Genieri, as the new main parish seat of St Mark the Evangelist, replacing the first small church in the Julian and Dalmatian Village: it offered larger and more functional rooms and, finally, the convent, which was essential for the life of the Franciscan friars.For 16 years, the church remained, as mentioned and even though it was never completed according to the original plan (which envisaged a building adjacent to today's but much larger), the parish seat of St. Mark the Evangelist until, in 1972, with the construction of the current church in the Julian Village, the jurisdiction of that parish returned to its original location and our church became its detached seat, used specifically as an oratory.Not many years later, however, with the housing development of the Cecchignola area and the increase in residents throughout the area, the original parish had to split in two and gave rise to the new parish named after St Joseph of Cupertino (from an article in Roma Sette of the time, giving news of the birth of our parish, we know that its name was chosen by Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the same one who signed, as papal vicar, the decrees of erection and defining the boundaries of the new parish).It was also entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, and the parish priest of St. Mark the Evangelist, Fr. Lorenzo Gottardello, came to lead it. With him a group of four friars: Fr Berardo De Grandis, Fr Giacinto Comisso, Fr Gianfranco Vanghetti and Fr Lino Pellanda.
The history of the parish was also the history, until recent times, of the Franciscan Friars of the Province of Padua, from whose bulletin only the original Deed of Birth of the Community of St. Joseph of Cupertino can be taken:
Summarising the salient moments, the most significant dates can be summarised as follows:

• 7 December 1956: the new church in Via dei Genieri is solemnly inaugurated, which becomes the main seat of the parish of St. Mark the Evangelist in Agro Laurentino.
• 28 May 1972: the parish seat moved again to the Giuliano e Dalmata Village, where the new church of St. Mark the Evangelist was inaugurated.
• 1 October 1979: the church became an autonomous parish with the title of St. Joseph of Cupertino.