Another Report from the Conference of European Churches in Velletri

Yet we are proud to present another piece of Moira Sleight’s report she made for the Methodist Recorder. This time she writes about the situation in Italy, which is very important to us. She was interviewing our President, Rev Massimo Aquilante.

Italy

Italy is going through a deep cultural, moral and spiritual crisis, according to the President of the Methodist Church in Italy, the Rev Massimo Aquilante.
The Italian people were forgetting that they were a people of emigrants and were becoming harsh towards immigrants. They had never previously been racist but now episodes of racism were occurring, especially in the North, he said.
The President said that in such a situation Italian Protestantism perceived its vocation as a call to have a prophetic role,

“that is not to give our fellow citizens any social doctrine or predetermined ethical instructions, but to proclaim to them the Kingdom of God and its appeal to ‘metanoia’, to accept in their lives the liberating grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”.

“Out of this specific understanding of what our vocation is about today comes the task for reform of the Church that builds up an ‘integrated Church’ or a ‘being Church together’ with the immigrants’, he said. The Methodist congregations were very ready to be open to immigrants. “If it is possible to live together within the Church, the same thing must be possible within society”, he said.

Filipino and Korean Methodists wanted bilateral congregations but, while accepted, these were different from the general Church policy of integration. Nearly every northern congregation has been touched by the presence of immigrants in its community. Recently new congregations had been established through the mission That Africans are doing among their own people. In these cases integration has had to be done at circuit not congregational level.

Projects
As well as the local efforts of congregations, there are a number of ongoing projects, including Project Mezzano working with the help of the Church in Ghana among African immigrants in the north of the country and a school in Bologna for Italian as a second language where more then 400 enrolled last year.
In Rome the Federation of Italian Protestant Churches assists migrants in obtaining documents, finding housing and teaching the Italian language.
A minister from the Methodist, Ghana, is due to come to Rome at the beginning of next year with the mandate to gather the immigrants from Africa into local churches. At the moment there are Africans within the English-speaking congregation at Ponte Sant’Angelo and within French –speaking congregation, which is made up entirely of migrants but none Italian-speaking congregations.
In Palermo there is a programme for prostitutes and one for women and children. The church council there has decided to start a new project to help those Africans who do not speak Italian, English or French to take part fully in the Sunday service and in the life of the congregation.
The Methodist Synod has decided it needs to train Italian Methodists in intercultural mediation.

“We have not started this yet but we know it is very important for us,” said the President.