BRIEFS:
PROTESTANT MINISTRY IN ITALY,
JANUARY THROUGH JULY 2004

continuing, occasional updates on Waldensian-Methodist (W-M), Baptist (B) and Federation of Protestant Churches ministry in Italy “for love and justice”. This edition, drawn in the main from the Baptist-Methodist-Waldensian weekly, Riforma, is organized as follows:

· discipleship markings
· resistance to war
· major decisional assemblies
· social ministries
· ecumenism and interfaith dialogue
· commemoratives

DISCIPLESHIP MARKINGS
I believe that the compromise struck in the preamble to the Constitution of the European Union—the wording “spiritual, religious and humanistic values in Europe”—is substantially respectful of all living faiths. It safeguards, above all, a non-confessional threshold which guarantees (far more than the Vatican-proposed “Christian roots” language) equal standing of organized religions in the European Union…Today confessing faith in Jesus Christ means remembering that we belong to the God who calls us to practice justice and respect for all on this planet. (Rev. Giuseppe Platone, Riforma editor, in a July page 1 lead article, More Fruit, Less Roots)

We have “delegated” two fundamental dimensions of our churches to experts—preaching to pastors and diaconal ministries to specialists. That’s professionalism and administrative competence, but could we have lost sight of a master chord of the Protestant message—the priesthood, and diaconate, too, of all believers? Paolo Ribet, pastor, Pinerolo W Church (Piedmont)

Diaconal ministry is a constitutive dimension of what the church is about. No diaconal ministry: no church!…So there has to be an organic relationship between diaconal ministry and the churches at worship. (Prof. Ermanno Genre, W Theol Seminary, at the March convocation in Florence on specialized ministry)

“Imagining another church: youth speak up” was a springtime series of articles in Riforma. Herewith a sampling: I dream a church more open to all kinds of change, to learning with folk who are different. (Mirella Arcidiacono) I want to be part of a church that asks hard questions of itself, that is well grounded in the struggles of this world, that lives courageous witness to the love of Jesus. (Elena Cozzi) I dream a church in which the pastor preaches once a month, leaving wide space for others to bring their reflections to the table. (Alessandra Zeppieri) So why don’t we go to church? From pews to pulpit, from hymns to the “churchy” language, it’s all stuffy. Where is the enthusiasm, the joy? (Luca Altieri)

From Philippians 2, the sermon title: God, too, is an immigrant. In becoming human. The preacher, Massimo Aprile, co-pastor of the Via Foria Church (B) in Naples, spoke at the service at the Piazza Cavour Church (W) at the conclusion of the March gathering in Rome of some 150 from across Italy and the continent involved in actualizing multicultural-multiracial dimensions to “living out the church together: uniting in diversity” (essere chiesa insieme). Lead sponsor: Italian Federation of Protestant Churches, with the collaboration and participation of immigrant-refugee units from the World Council of Churches, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Conference of European Churches, and the European Churches’ Commission on Immigration.

RESISTANCE TO WAR
A robust river of rainbow flags, sign of peacemaking, flowed in the huge NATIONAL RALLY FOR PEACE in Rome in March. Italian Protestants there among the hundreds of thousands began with an ecumenical service at the Via Teatro in Valle Church (B), where welcomed were celebrated Catholic peace and human rights stalwarts as Alex Zanotelli and Gianni Novelli. At about the same time Fr. Zanotelli addressed several events in Naples-Ponticelli billed as “PURSUING PATHWAYS TO PEACE”, continuing local Methodist-Catholic collaboration of some years’ standing in the field of inspiring hope in a blighted and troubled area of the city.

DECISIONAL ASSEMBLIES
This I hold dear: right in the heart of a most troubled part of
Palermo, a center (yes, the Noce Center) standing as a oasis,
never to be transformed into a “fortress”, but employed by
churches as an instrument in common trust for “seeking the
welfare of the city.” (Alessandra Trotta, ordained as a diaconal
minister in June by the 4th District of the W-M churches)

Actions of the mid-year DISTRICT CONFERENCES of the W-M churches include: encouraging churches to work harder at integration of non-Italian traditions into worship with immigrant-refugee people, agreeing to close the Lombardini Center at Milan-Cinisello, and recording “profound conviction” (after the 2004 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA) on the war in Iraq as “unwise, illegal, and immoral” (North); recommending to the ’04 W-M synod reception of the Philippine Methodist Church in Rome (Central); recommending to the synod that ordinations to diaconal ministry take place at the synod, in light of the parity of pastoral and diaconal ministry (South).

SOCIAL MINISTRIES
Since its launching in the early 1960s the Christian Service ministry in RIESI (Sicily) has aimed to be yeast in the wider local society. Schooling with a distinct international stamp has been a signature experience at the center, as evidenced by continuing exchanges (running to 2001) with educators from Avesta, not far from Stockholm, Sweden.

The rehabilitation of the 16th--century Casa Cavagnis, the Waldensians’ center in VENICE since 1868, now represents a decade’s investment approaching two million dollars, from public and private funding alike. The center, housing a chapel, hostel-guest house, cultural center, and accommodations for staff, is at the intersection of two canals a 10-15 minutes’ walk from St. Mark’s Square.

Just where the church ought to be: to the Baptist Church in SYRACUSE (Sicily) has been entrusted the role of coordinating in the province a circle of churches and public institutions aiming to confront the abuse of women by violence. “A challenge, for sure,” says the pastor, Salvatore Rapisarda, “but one put in our hands by God on behalf of God’s creatures.”

Pursuant to a fraternal relationship between the Protestant Hospital of NAPLES and the Evangelical Church of Cameroon, staff and patients from an African hospital visit the Naples facility for professional enrichment and selected treatment, respectively. Proceeds from the W-M 8/1000 national tax rebate income were instrumental in the construction of an orthopedic wing in the African facility.

In recent years inquiry units of the field of BIOETHICS have come to the fore in Italian Protestant denominations. Upon invitation of the W-M commission on bioethics, the several bodies in May met together for the first time in Florence. The joint consultation agreed that ethical decisions intrinsically are provisional and prone to create tensions.

TARANTO (Puglia) is the scene of extreme environmental degradation—nuclear and petrochemical toxic waste. The conscience of the W and M churches in the area has been so aroused that advocacy for transformation is very much on the churches’ mind.

In July Italy’s high court invalidated a regressive part of the infamous Bossi-Fini law on immigration, a court action for which the Federation of Protestant Churches had fought vigorously.

ECUMENISM AND INTERFAITH DIALOGUE
The second national day of “CHRISTIAN-ISLAMIC DIALOGUE in a multi-cultural and religious society” was observed in December in a number of communities.

The Italian Baptists’ partnership with the AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES (ABC) in Virginia (USA) moves ahead encouragingly (youth and choral exchanges) following the termination of relationships with the very conservative Southern Baptist Convention in the US. In a January interview with Riforma an ABC leader acknowledges that Italian Baptists offer ABC a “challenge toward finding greater courage in addressing controversial public life issues.”

MILAN’s Council of Christian Churches, constituted in the 1990s and embracing 17 Catholic-Orthodox-Protestant confessions, in June sponsored an ecumenical itinerary in the Middle East among Israelis and Palestinians, organized by the interfaith journal, Confronti, and its editor, Paolo Naso. a Waldensian.

COMMEMORATIVES
In December the Baptist congregation in MATERA (Basilicata) marked its first 100 years. Luigi Loperfido (known as the “white monk”—by which the community is hailed to this day) organized dirt-poor farming families brutally exploited by land barons, and deriving from his struggle for workers’ rights the congregation was born.

Likewise celebrated in December: the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Corso V. Emanuele Church (W) in TURIN, a major Protestant facility in Italy. During the course of a convention, which featured a number university speakers, Rev. Giorgio Tourn, Waldensian historian, observed that Turin would become the Waldensians’ major “laboratory” in working through ideas and conflicts in the post-mid-1800s period following emancipation.

Once again, last January 27, on the anniversary marking the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, a number of communities took up HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY.

The annual WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY in January, among other events across the country, brought choirs from seven traditions to the Via P. Lambertenghi Church (M) in Milan, for a program called, “Words and Music: the People Sing of Peace”, with evocations of Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and still others interspersed with choral offerings.

February marked the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the historic PROTOCAL BETWEEN THE WALDENSIAN NATIONAL BOARD AND THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT. In the intervening years protocols have been signed as well with the Italian Adventist, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Lutheran and Jewish national bodies. Protocols with Buddhist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Apostolic, Orthodox and other bodies are in limbo at present, so much so that leadership of the Italian Federation of Protestant Churches is “deeply concerned about the future of religious freedom in Italy.”

The March bicentennial of the British Bible Society, which would become the foundation for the ITALIAN BIBLE SOCIETY, was celebrated at All Saints Anglican Church in Rome.

Also in Rome, in May, at the Via XX Settembre Church (M), a service was held to mark the eighth anniversary of the city’s KOREAN METHODIST CHURCH, the naming of the former pastor as superintendent of the 50 Korean Methodist churches in Europe, and the installation of the congregation’s new pastor.

In a national referendum on 2 June 1946 the Italians voted to become a republic. To mark that HISTORIC PASSAGE TO DEMOCRACY, this June, as in every year, Italian Protestants, particularly in the Historic Waldensian Valleys (Piedmont), participated avidly in civic solemnities.

June saw the centennial of the inauguration of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in FLORENCE, the facility which in 1956 was conveyed to the Waldensians. Title of the Riforma review of the occasion: From temple to a large tent welcoming of all…

Now an inauguration. Early in the last century, a laborer in the Cosenza rail yards, Francesco Scornaienchi, upon learning the gospel from a Protestant co-worker, began a house church in his mountain village, DIPIGNANO (Calabria). For decades he toiled as spiritual leader, alone, and the church grew. Not until the mid-1940s did a trained pastor, a Waldensian, from Cosenza, begin working in Dipignano. At length, in the mid-1990s the Catholic church in the village was abandoned and the chapel was conveyed to the Waldensian community, an uncommon sign of good will. Fully rehabilitated, and in the presence of area Catholics and Waldensians from across the nation, the 12th-century village church in May was rededicated as a Waldensian chapel.