According to Giovanni De Carlis's 1971 book on Marian sanctuaries connected to deaf history: In Villafranca, an agricultural town with over 8,000 residents, a sanctuary has existed since 1500. It was built on the site where the Virgin Mary appeared to a young deaf girl and healed her. Annual celebrations take place on the first Sunday of August and continue for two days.
The Santa Maria delle Grazie Sanctuary stands along a local road (Via Madonna n.17). Its architectural design features clean, elegant lines. The apse includes a large window topped by an arch, creating a niche that allows viewing of the crypt from outside. Inside, multiple altars and the presbytery vault with twelve sections display frescoes of the apostles. Along the walls flanking the main altar are more frescoes, definitely from the early 1500s, created to narrate the apparition that gave rise to the sanctuary. Above the small ancient altar, accessible from behind the main altar, sits the marble statuette of the Madonna which, according to tradition, was miraculously discovered at the location where the sanctuary now stands.
The miraculous event is documented in a 1479 record concerning the transfer of the consecrated site by the Bishop of Padua to the mendicant friars of the San Girolamo da Fiesole congregation. They were entrusted with building the sanctuary but failed to complete the project, which was ultimately finished through the intervention of Father Paolo Zabarella, a Paduan nobleman and prior of the Eremitani convent in Padua. The parish priest of Villafranca signed the deed transferring the Santa Maria delle Grazie church to Father Paolo Zabarella on May 11, 1503. After numerous changes regarding the sanctuary's administration and jurisdiction, along with its connection to the Church of Santa Cecilia, the building was definitively assigned to the Santa Cecilia Parish, which also became the parish seat. Today, the sanctuary remains a constant destination for numerous pilgrims who come from far and wide to visit the church and attend its ceremonies.
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"History bears witness to times, illuminates truth, gives life to memory, and serves as life's teacher" (Cicero)
"History is useful not because we read the past in it, but because we read the future" (M. D'Azeglio)
"We must remember the past to build a better future" (V. Ieralla)