Church of San Michele Arcangelo

The Church of San Michele Arcangelo is located in the hamlet of the same name in the Municipality of Sacile.

The Archangel Michael was considered by the Lombards a protector of their people. The devotion to the saint dates back to the sixth century and is also to be connected to the political activities of Pope Gregory the Great.

Probably the place names of Ronche and San Michele have to do precisely with the Longobard past in our territory and perhaps those who suppose the existence of a place of worship refer precisely to that era. In fact, it must be remembered that the Lombards built several sacred buildings.

Furthermore, according to some experts, Roncho, Ronchis, Ronch and Ronche derive from the toponym of Lombard origin which means desolate woods. The latter probably served as protection, barrier and defense for the inhabited areas.

There are testimonies that attest that since the seventeenth century there was a small church in the center of the hamlet of San Michele, which was subsequently destroyed.

At the Cathedral of San Nicolò, since the eighteenth century there was an altar dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo. It was a tradition of those centuries, to transfer the altars to neighboring churches when they were renovated or demolished.

The contemporary history of the parish and the current church dates back to the seventies and eighties of the last century.

At the beginning of the seventies of the twentieth century, the then Mons. Aldo Santin decided to convene the inhabitants of the hamlets of San Michele and Ronche and of the locality of Cornadella to establish a new parish which will then take the name Parish of San Michele Arcangelo and Santissimo Redentore.

At the beginning of 1973 a committee of people from the hamlet undertook to follow the project, the purchase of the land and the various authorizations for the construction of the future church of San Michele.

In the middle of the year, a prefabricated church was placed that came from Vidor to officiate Sunday masses, sacraments and everything else needed by a community waiting to enter the new church.

In the following months the various authorizations for the constitution of the parish arrived.

In 1978, authorization was granted for the construction of the new sacred building and construction work began in September. Some volunteers donated about a thousand hours of work to build the church of San Michele.

The prefabricated church was finally dismantled and taken away, at the end of the Holy Week of 1980.

In the autumn of 1980 the new church was completed and the community was able to celebrate the first Christmas there.

In the following years the community expanded so in February 1987 the task of expanding the church was entrusted to prof. Trebbi. In fact, the faithful increased and the space in the church was not enough.

The enlarged church is the one we can currently see in San Michele. The building has a modern structure characterized on the outside by pedestrian paths that extend towards the square of the hamlet. The function of these arcades is to invite people to various celebrations. The interior has a single nave consisting of a large hall where benches were placed at different heights, which starting from the altar, located at the bottom, reach the level of the baptistery located higher. All this also has the function of giving importance to the tabernacle placed next to the altar.

The presbytery can be imagined in three spaces: the place of the word, the place of sacrifice and that of sacramental permanence.

In the backdrop of the presbytery, a beautiful full-height cathedral-type stained glass window stands out in which the author, Luigi Veronesi, developed a plot of the Archangel Michael. The window was offered by Comm. Bortolo Salvador in memory of his wife Angela.

Map: Church of San Michele Arcangelo