“O Madonna che regni dal monte di Soviore, Regina d’amor,
Monterosso a te china la fronte, ti dà l’anima, il braccio e il cuor.”
(Inno alla Madonna di Soviore di Padre Antonio Durante)
Father Antonio Durante (1895-1970) was a Capuchin friar originates from Monterosso who after becoming a priest was for many years a missionary in Uruguay and Argentina. When in Buenos Aires, Antonio followed the community of Italian migrants and founded the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in the Coghlan neighborhood. Pope Francis, at the time Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, celebrated a mass in his memory in 1995 and then again in 2010, twenty-five and forty years after his death respectively, recalling the figure of this Capuchin friar, close to migrants in Argentina and considered a saint by the his people.
