A 420-year-old Italian church has remarkably escaped an enormous rockfall that initially engulfed it.
The Santuario di Gallivaggio, in northern Italy near the Italian-Swiss border, was swamped by 7500 cubic metres of stone and earth on May 30, after 2.5 inches of rain in just 24 hours.
Incredibly, the rockslide stopped just feet from the church, with video of the natural disaster, captured on mobile phone by an onlooker, emerging today on the internet.
"As a believer I say that the provident hand of God accompanied this event, which could have ended tragically," Parish priest Don Andrea Caelli told Avvenire.
The church was built in 1598 on the site where two young claimed seeing the Virgin Mary in 1492, the Western Journal reported.
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