BRIEFS:
AT TRAPANI (SICILY), A “NEW HOPE” CENTER

Amid a mid-September weekend of dialogue on “Christian hope, engagement in public life, and struggle against mafia forces”, freedom songs from Latin America, and worship, a new Waldensian facility was inaugurated in the Sicilian coastal town of Trapani.

Commented the Baptist-Methodist-Waldensian weekly, Riforma, “Out of the old, the new. The terracotta perimeter walls of a 1920s carpentry shop now support the multi-functional center of the Waldensian community which a year ago marked its first fifty years. Arresting new interior and exterior brickwork; a sloping inverted “v” wooden ceiling; and simple, clean lines of the architect, Paolo Landi, attest to a dramatic fresh statement of Waldensian intentions for ministry in Sicily.”

Saturday’s conference on “Christian hope…”, drawing 150 participants, was no casual or academic matter. The mafia presence is a sinister fact of life, recently characterized by a local official as a “metastasizing cancer”. The community’s mid-‘80s to mid-‘90s pastor, Laura Leone, focused on the “hope” dimension of ministry as no mere aspiration, but “responsibility for present day-in, day-out commitment to overcome injustice.”
The evening’s freedom music attracted many young folks, curious to see what the “grandparents” of the aging congregation could be up to.

The dedicatory worship service was led by the congregation’s young pastor, Marcello Salvaggio, with the sermon by Giuseppe Ficara, the immediate-past pastor (currently, pastor of the Via Spezio Waldensian Church in Palermo, and member of the Waldensian National Board) whose inspiration ignited locals to press on for the new facility, replacing a very limited chapel, itself an ex-warehouse. Visiting friends from far and wide (United Kingdom, Germany, US [AWS’ Jack Ferlino], where churches undertook to finance most of the project) joined representatives from the Sicilian churches in bringing joyous greetings that extended over an hour. Present also with words of encouragement and call to “tell the gospel of Jesus in today’s Sicily” was the newly-elected and first female moderator of the Waldensian National Board, Maria Bonafede.