Further to the direct email communication dated 10 February 2026 from the Grant Management Services of the European Research Executive Agency, we are pleased to congratulate you on the success of your project 101263918 — RELiCS (Researching European Legacy in Colonial Sri Lanka: Digitally Preserving Neglected 19th-Century Congregational Missionary Architecture and Its Transcultural Heritage) under the highly competitive Global Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Call HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF.
The project is led by Principal Investigator Sagara Jayasinghe, Department of Integrated Design, Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, with Olimpia Niglio as coordinator and scientific supervisor, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at the University of Pavia.
The research project received an excellent evaluation because it fills a significant gap in the history and restoration of Sri Lankan architecture, offering the first comprehensive study of nineteenth‑century Catholic missionary churches, which have long been neglected. These churches were built under the auspices of Propaganda Fide (the Roman Curia for the Propagation of the Faith) and stand as clear evidence of the presence of missionary congregations operating outside the main colonial powers—namely the Portuguese (1505–1658), the Dutch (1658–1796), and the British (1796–1948). Consequently, the project focuses on churches associated with various religious congregations, primarily the Oratorians, Italian Benedictines, Spanish Cistercians, and French Oblates, whose architectural contributions in Sri Lanka remain largely undocumented and misunderstood by international scholarship.
All methodological components are structured to achieve the Research Objectives through a logical sequence of activities carried out at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the University of Pavia and through a non‑academic internship within the Archdiocese of Lucca. Indeed, for the first time, an Italian diocese participated in an international scientific competition thanks to the research project Thesaurum Fidei, promoted by the Archdiocese of Lucca in 2022 and coordinated by Professor Olimpia Niglio and Archbishop Paolo Giulietti. Notably, the Thesaurum Fidei project—building on significant precedents established through research conducted in Japan between 2013 and 2018 for the recognition of Hidden Christianity as World Heritage—has, since 2023, received acknowledgements from several Vatican institutions, including the Dicastery for Evangelization, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Vatican Apostolic Library, and the Vatican Apostolic Archive.
The RELiCS project will begin in September 2026 and will run for 27 months, following an intensive and demanding research program of strong international cultural relevance. The work will take place in numerous international, Vatican, and religious‑order archives involved in the study.
