The Jubilee Portal Saved from the Landslide
On the belvedere overlooking the Adriatic Sea and the Tremiti Islands, there is a solitary wall with a stone portal from Maiella.
In the 13th-century pinnacle, the Madonna holds a baby Jesus who, strangely, wears a royal crown on his head.
These are the only remains of the church of San Pietro, destroyed by a landslide in 1956 and jealously preserved by the people of Vasto because, even today, anyone who passes through that door on the third Sunday of January obtains the remission of all their sins.
This privilege, called the “Jubilee of the Vastesi” and still valid for the Catholic Church today, was granted by Pius VI to celebrate the 500 years since an important historical event: the arrival in Vasto on February 7, 1177, of Pope Alexander III who found refuge in the church of San Pietro, defended by seven Templar castles around that small village.
Having escaped the danger, on March 9, Alexander, still under the protection of the Templars, set out again to reach Venice. There he met his arch-enemy Frederick Barbarossa who, after years of conflict, bowed to him, recognizing the superiority of papal power over imperial power.
From that success, which in many ways appeared to the pope as a miracle, gratitude towards San Pietro and the village of Vasto arose, gratitude perpetuated by the establishment of the Jubilee of the Vastesi. Even today, this gratitude manages to keep standing the wall of an ancient church that once stood on a slope that collapsed towards the sea many years ago.
