Saturday 23 March 2013

The chapel of Notre-Dame-la-Neuve Caillouville at St-Wandrille

To the right of the church ruins on the bank next to the ancient crenelated wall of St-Wandrille Monastery, still equipped with its staircase turrets, stands a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, as a result of a vow made by Abbot Dom Gabriel Gontard on August 15, 1944, after the bombing of the monastery by the Germans during WWII. The monks of the Abbey erected it with their own hands from 1952 to 1968.

Although now intramural, this chapel was rebuilt at the site of the original position of the St-Wandrille Church, at the sources of Fontenelle River, where Saint Wandrille (the Monastery's Founder and Namesake) had built it in the seventh century.
 

The nave is a very simple, covered structure. There, near a beautiful Madonna and Child statue, lies Dom Gabriel Gontard (RIP 1986), who approved the first MSM Rule in 1945 and dubbed Dom Gerard-Marie Lafond, the MSM's Founder, in 1947. The vaulted shrine is lit by stained-glass windows depicting Our Lady of the Angels, by Decorchemont, of St. Wandrille healing an aggressor at the sources of the Fontenelle, and of Dom Gontard and his monks dedicating the votive chapel to the Virgin.





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