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Church of Santa Maria Assunta (Rancio)

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The church of Santa Maria Assunta is the parish church of Rancio, a district of Lecco leaning on the slopes of Monte San Martino. The building seen today dates from the 19th century: the works, to a design by Bernardino Todeschini, ran from 1877 to 1883.

History

Rancio has always been split into a lower and an upper part, and each has a church: Santa Maria Assunta in Lower Rancio, the sanctuary of Santa Maria Gloriosa in the Upper. For the parish church the earliest point the records mention is 1566, when it was a chapel with a resident priest in the pieve of Lecco. The regional record of historical archives calls it a «vice-parish church» at the pastoral visit of Federico Borromeo, in 1608; Wikipedia gives 1508 instead, a date that is impossible for an archbishop born in 1564, and the regional record is followed here. On 16 May 1639 the church was made a parish.

The later pastoral visits let us count the faithful. In 1746, under Archbishop Giuseppe Pozzobonelli, there were 422 parishioners (305 communicants) and the church housed the confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament and that of the Holy Trinity «ad redimendos captivos», founded on 8 June 1721; the oratories of San Carlo at Castione and of San Martino, called «in the field», depended on the parish. Between Easter 1779 and Easter 1780 the souls numbered 571, and in 1897, at the first visit of Archbishop Andrea Carlo Ferrari, 1,817.

The present church replaced the earlier one through Todeschini’s works (1877-1883). The bell tower, designed by Angelo Manzoni, was already finished in 1881. In the first half of the 20th century the decorations were added; after the Second Vatican Council the altar rails were removed and an ambo was added, with the altar turned towards the congregation.

The bells

The tower has a well-documented history, told by Lecco Notizie when the bells returned to it. The first two were cast in 1881 by the Pruneri firm of Cosio Valtellino and hung in 1887. In 1906, after the copper dome collapsed under the force of the wind, it was rebuilt in reinforced concrete and three bells were added, from the same Valtellina foundry. In 1943 the two largest were requisitioned and taken to Seregno; they came back to Rancio about a year later, in 1944, on payment of 14,500 lire. The bells were taken down on 18 January 2013 to be overhauled at Pozzuolo Martesana and put back on 16 October 2014. There are five, named for Christ the Saviour (the largest), the Madonna Assunta, Saint Joseph, Saint John the Baptist and the Guardian Angels, and they keep an old wooden keyboard like a piano’s, on which the bell-ringer played.

What to see

The façade faces south. A horizontal cornice divides it into two bands with pilasters: below, three lintelled doorways and two statues in niches; above, a large window, two more figures and the triangular pediment. The bell tower stands beside it, in stages, with four round-arched openings on the belfry and a pyramidal spire on top.

Inside, three aisles are separated by piers faced with pilasters that carry round arches and a moulded entablature, from which the vault springs. At the far end the presbytery, raised a few steps, holds the high altar and closes in a polygonal apse.

The church is tied to a man born in Rancio: Blessed Giovanni Battista Mazzucconi, born on 1 March 1826, the first martyr of PIME, killed on 7 September 1855 on the island of Woodlark, in today’s Papua New Guinea, and beatified in 1984. For the bicentenary of his birth the district organised days of celebrations in 2026, with a solemn Mass in this church too. Lecco Tourism adds that in front of the paintings of Mazzucconi kept here the young Carlo Mauri, the future mountaineer and explorer, is said to have found the push for his expeditions.

Nearby

At Castione, the district’s hamlet, piazza San Carlo has the 18th-century chapel of San Carlo and, in front, the Fontana delle Tre Bocche (Fountain of the Three Spouts), also called the Castione fountain. The stonemason Abbondio Molinari made it in 1853, in Saltrio stone, when the aqueduct designed by the engineer Cosmo Pini was built: on top, three intertwined stone dolphins throw the water. In 2010 the Lecco branch of the FAI paid for the restoration and the municipality redid the square, reopened on 7 November.

From Rancio, paths set off towards Monte San Martino, in particular to the little chapel of the Madonna del Carmine and to the Crocione.

Practical information

  • The church is in via San Giovanni Bosco, in Lower Rancio; the district lies about a kilometre and a half north of the centre of Lecco.
  • We found no official source for opening hours or Mass times: it is best to ask the parish, which belongs to the pastoral community of Blessed Giovanni Mazzucconi and Blessed Luigi Monza together with Laorca and San Giovanni.
  • The City of Lecco website has a page titled «Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta» that describes the church of Chiuso, not this one in Rancio.

Sources

On the map

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