Beatification in Bologna: The Exhibition “Cuore Forato: il mistero di sangue di Monte Sole”

(ANS – Bologna) – Wednesday, September 23, 2026, marks the start of “Pierced Heart. Mystery of Blood: Man, Christ, the Martyrs of Monte Sole,” an exhibition path under the porticoes of the Basilica of Saints Bartholomew and Gaetan in Bologna, Strada Maggiore 4. The exhibition invites visitors to stop, listen, and reflect upon one of the most dramatic pages in the history of the region. Not a historical tour, but… a call to action.

The title is deliberately ambiguous. The heart can be “pierced,” punctured like a tire that can no longer move forward; but it can also be that of the martyrs who, like Him, through their own wounds become the testimony of a given life, or the Heart of Christ Himself, pierced on Calvary.

The exhibition was born in a time still marked by war and hatred, what Pope Francis defined as a “third world war fought piecemeal.” It offers an itinerary in silence, to listen to a story that cries out to consciences and, at the same time, whispers a question.

At the center of the exhibition are the lives of Fr. Ubaldo Marchioni, Fr. Elia Comini, and Fr. Martino Capelli, killed in Monte Sole in September 1944 (who will be beatified on September 27) together with Sr. Maria Nerina Fiori, Fr. Ferdinando Casagrande, Fr. Giovanni Fornasini, and the hundreds of women, men, elderly, and children swept away by the massacre. A total of 770 broken lives are remembered along the path: real people, with a name, a face, and a story.

Priests who chose not to flee. Having become “Simon of Cyrene” figures, they shared the weight of the cross, humiliated as “beasts of burden” and executed alongside other brothers. Up to their last breath, they were capable of invoking mercy, blessing, and forgiveness.

Through an evocative display, the journey reveals how names, studies, and Marian devotion shaped these witnesses, and how the irony of fate reversed the executioners’ plans: those who wanted to erase life only opened the way to the immortality of an unshakeable love.

By scanning the QR codes along the glowing “red line,” visitors will hear the mystery of these lives given. The exhibition reveals itself as a pro-Vocation for the present: a heartfelt appeal to overcome the anesthesia of the heart and to become, in everyday life, courageous artisans of peace.

The exhibition accompanies the visitor through words, images, audio recordings, and symbols: the abyss of the human heart, the bonds that can become a sanctuary or chains, study that becomes life, the way of the cross and mercy, the price of the gift, up to the “pierced” heart.

It is precisely in the wounds that the mystery of the exhibition is concentrated: from the martyred bodies of the Blessed witnesses passes not only blood, but a new light. The wounds become narrow slits through which a love that never dies passes.

“Pierced Heart” does not merely want to tell what happened in Monte Sole. It aims to confront the visitor with a question that concerns both yesterday and today: what kind of heart lives within each of us? A heart of stone, capable of indifference and violence, or a heart of flesh, capable of compassion, forgiveness, and self-giving?

The itinerary thus fully becomes a provocation—an invitation to recognize, within the weaves of conflict, the warp of charity, and to discover that peace can also be born from the daily choices of everyone.

The exhibition, which will remain open until October 1, 2026, was created by Fr. Erino Leoni SDB and produced by Andrea Marconi and Andrea Cugini of the Graphic School of Milan.

Source: Salesian Info Agency (Infoans.org)