The origin of this church has its roots in the 14th century. On June 15, 1388, in fact, the then bishop of Catania Msgr. Simone del Pozzo granted the honest and devout inhabitants of Pedara the license to build their first parish church under the title of the Most Glorious Virgin Mary Mother of God? The site designated for construction was the loco Trinconelli, Trinconello, where there is a cistern. The construction work had to proceed fairly quickly if already in 1390 we have the appointment of the first parish priest in the person of the priest Giovanni da Catania. The licensing document, however, does not give us any other information to identify the site exactly and does not even make explicit the Marian title to which this first church was dedicated. To this second question we are helped by a document of 1422 concerning a grant of land in contrada Pedara, near the church of santa Maria Annunziata, surrounded on all sides by the sciara nuova; if, only 32 years after its construction, it is called of ?santa Maria Annunziata? it is licit to believe that this has been its title since its foundation. Various hypotheses, however, have been put forward about the exact location of its location but only further studies can give us a definite answer. As we have reported above, the church in 1422 was surrounded by a new lava flow, probably that of 1408, and still others, especially between 1536 and 1537, swept over the territory pushing the Pedaresi to settle further downstream giving birth to today's ?san Biagio? and ?Matrice? neighborhoods. Here, in 1547, they began construction of the new parish church dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria, who became co-patron saint of the town along with the Annunziata; proof that the Pedaresi had not abandoned their devotion to Our Lady was tangible: the high altar of the new church was in fact dedicated to the Annunziata. Meanwhile, at the end of the ?500s, Ludovico Pappalardo, grandfather of Don Diego Pappalardo, built the new church on one of his estates with rights of burial and patronage; these rights were exercised by his descendants at least until the 19th century. After the 1693 earthquake it was rebuilt thanks to the tireless work of Don Diego Pappalardo, who completed it in 1695.
In 1910 a ?dinastes? of the Pappalardo family, a certain Giovanni Papalardo, raised the sail vault with the ?cappellone? near the apse, and adorned the interior with outposts on the walls and a flight of columns supporting the entire entablature. In the second half of the 19th century, probably in 1888 in conjunction with the construction of the splendid ferculum for the external feast of Our Lady, the church was enlarged with the addition of the right aisle, sufficient to house the ferculum, which remained there until 1935. In 1908 the left aisle was added. It holds the mortal remains of the Servant of God Giuseppina Faro (1847 ? 1871), a young Pedarese woman who died in the odor of sanctity for whom the process of beatification is still underway. Always the destination of many pilgrimages, later also increased by the presence of the tomb of the ?blessed Peppina? (as the Pedaresi have called her since her death), in 1971 the archbishop of Catania, Msgr. Guido Luigi Bentivoglio, elevated it to the dignity of diocesan Marian shrine.
