The Archisculpture.
The execution of the project had to live-up to this strong concept. In order to achieve this "Faith had to move the Mountains", because it was decided to chose the only existing material who would allow to combine the features of a building with those of a monumental sculpture - white Carrara marble of the Cave Michelangelo, where already the Buonarroti choose his monolithes for the David, Moses and his other masterpieces.
In order to create a room allowing for meditation in small groups the Cell had to be four metres high and about three metres wide, the maximum you can execute out of one single bloc. The original bloc has a weight of approx. 200 tons (the largest bloc ever extracted to create a sculpture) and will be reduced in the cave to about 70 tons before starting his descent into the valley. In the studios of Franco Barattini, the owner of Cave Michelangelo, Anna Chromy and her assistants will, in about one years work, liberate the Coat of Peace hidden in the bloc of all the surrounding materials.
The Coat will be located at the entrance of the Woods of S. Francis (Selva di S.F.) close to the entrance of the Upper Basilica (Basilica Superiore).
Hopefully this first location in one of the universal centers of peace will be followed by many others. To explain why for the first Coat of Peace we chose the home of Saint Francis let's listen to Frederico Garcia Lorca, Hermann Hesse and John Paul II:
"St Francis of Assisi is love, purity, nature, poetry.... He is recognised in the entire world not only for embodying depth of thought and extreme determination in his spiritual choices, but also for being an outsider, for living on the edge of society, for setting free from dominant cultural trends and from the toils of clergy hierarchy and social power"
"...The environment issue is directly linked to many moral values which are of great importance for the development of a peaceful society......From St Francis of Assisi we received evidence that if we are at peace with God, we can devote ourselves to the development of harmony within the whole of the universe uniting all people together"
"St. Francis realised that being completely without possessions was the only possible way to inner freedom, and on the spur of the moment he gave up all of his property.....By involving the whole earth, the plants, stars, animals, winds and water in his love for God...St. Francis of Assisi found the language of what is timelessly human.....St. Francis and Martin preached the same doctrine as Tolstoy, but in his case both the person and the doctrine are as bright, flexible and joyful as Tolstoy is dark, reserved and oppressive"
