Former Church of San Leonardo in Militello in Val di Catania
The Church of San Leonardo in Militello in Val di Catania and the adjoining Augustinian convent, now reduced to a state of ruins, were an important religious complex in the village.
The church was built in the mid-sixteenth century as the seat of a brotherhood. In 1630 the convent was built at the behest of the Branciforte family who hosted the Reformed Augustinian friars of the Sicilian Congregation of Centorbina, who until then had been housed in a small convent outside the city, u Conventazzu. The church and convent were not damaged in the earthquake of 1693. After the suppression of ecclesiastical bodies in 1866 and following the lowering of the road which made access impassable, the church fell into disuse, while the convent premises were used as public schools until the 1950s.
The church is now in a state of ruins. On the facade you can still see the front of the entrance door which features a frieze with the monogram of Christ inscribed in a twelve-rayed sun and an epigraph with the dedication to the titular saint dated 1638. Inside there are some traces of the seventeenth-century stucco and the remains of the high altar.
Inside there were valuable works: the seventeenth-century statue of San Leonardo Abate, the fifteenth-century alabaster statue of the Madonna of Trapani and other paintings and furnishings now kept at the Museo San Nicolò; the papier-mâché statue of Santa Monica, later modified to represent the more popular Santa Rita, today kept in the mother church of San Nicola.
