Maryam Dengelat is one of the 200 rupestrian churches of Tigray, which according to tradition was dug in the sixth century. The church, situated near Adigrat across the Agame Massif, was inaccessible for about 400 years since a section of the mountain collapsed, taking with it the entrance of the church.

On 24 March 2019, for the first time in more than 400 years, priests were able to celebrate a mass in the church, after having climbed 30 meters. Thanks to two Italian mountaineers, the five priests managed to ascend and penetrate the inside of the church to lead the ceremony. An electrician who would install the light and loudspeaker also went up.

A gathering of 300 priests, including Melake Genet Abba Kidane Mariam, personal assistant to His Holiness Abune Mathias, officials, and the faithful attended the ceremony at the feet of the cliffs.

It all began a year ago when Hagos Gebremariam of the University of Adigrat approached Luigi Cantamessa, owner of Korkor Lodge and author of the Ethiopian guidebook, to ask him if he could help in organizing logistic and professional support to access the church. Luigi responded positively and started contacting prospective volunteers to carry out the task.

In March 2019, Giorgio Malluci and his partner, Elizabetta Galli, Italian alpinists,, and active members of Mountain Wilderness, responded to the call of their friend. They were tasked with making the climb and outfitting the imposing rock face that separates the church from the underlying plain at a height equivalent to two 5-story buildings. It took them three weeks of work, a perforator in hand to fix the concrete irons in the rock and the pitons of the iron path which would finally allowed access to the small wooden door stuck in the middle of a stone wall. Despite the discomfort, physical exertion, poor quality of the rock, Giorgio ends up reaching the level of the church, under the amazed gaze of the villagers.

On March 24, a local priest Haftey Araya was hoisted along the cliff’s wall. He managed to open the church, becoming the clergyman to re-enter the Maryam Dengelat church after the fourth-century.

« Abandoning Maryam Dengelat is no longer an option,»  Luigi Cantamessa promised to the religious community during the re-opening ceremony. A lot of work remained before the troglodyte church could be returned to the community. A crowdfunding campaign was launched and a handful of French volunteers landed six months later. Among them, Olivier Grunewald, photographer, and alpinist and Stéphane Trannoy, a specialist in hard-to-access work came to strengthen the security of the church. For three days, they rose from dawn along the cliff and with masks and with shovels, they attacked the evacuation of an 80 cm thick carpet, with droppings accumulated by generations of birds. The reinforcing priests tirelessly searched amidst the guano, from which they extracted whole pottery, shards of porcelain originating in China, small bibles of illuminated leather, and most importantly, the Tabot of the church. Luigi with Stephen Rickerby and Lisa Shekede, wall painting conservation experts, examined the frescoes, including the presence in the midst of the frescoes of Stephanos, a holy figure to which the orthodox of the region seem so attached.

Maryam Dengelat’s door is closed again but there is an ongoing project to set up a museum in an existing building located at the base. Since the site itself will not be open to the public, the museum would display photographs of the church’s mural paintings and artifacts of the church.

A YouTube video uploaded by Olivier Grunewald shows Elizabetta Galli equipping the iron path to allow access to the church.