Protestants in Italy

The Protestants are making headway among Italy's Roman Catholics. So said the Vatican last week in a report compiled by the Paulist Fathers, who were assigned three years ago to survey Italian Protestantism, much of it ministered by U.S. missionaries. The country's 200,000 Protestants in a population of 48 million were often subject to police harassment and refused permits necessary for Protestant public activities, until last month, when Italy's highest court declared this requirement unconstitutional. The Vatican is far from pleased by such relaxation of the rules, asserts that the Protestants ("this condemned peril") are using "propaganda methods that now find wide application," and calls for "most decisive defense action." Highlights of the report:

P: "The Waldensians* spread propaganda among cultured people, professionals and university students . . . They have obtained good results."

P: "Jehovah's Witnesses zealously push propaganda into private homes. They divided Rome into zones visited daily by 75 propagandists . . . They distributed in a single month here 250,000 publications and 1,450,000 leaflets."

P: "Pentecostalians try to evangelize the most humble classes . . . They distribute food, clothing and other subsidies."

P: "Seventh-Day Adventists sent postcards to names culled from the telephone directory to entice students into their Bible classes, with optimum results."

P: "The Salvation Army occupies itself especially with evangelizing the city's lower depths--prostitutes and fugitives from justice. Many rehabilitated people become converts."

P: "Particular attention is drawn to the Church of Don Basilio [i.e., the Mission of Faith, a small, offbeat, sect], which because of its visionary character has numerous proselytizers in the Holy City. Many converts have been made among gardeners in city parks and porters in railroad terminals."

During 1956, Protestants converted 475 Catholics in Rome. This figure sounds small, but, as the Vatican report points out, it is roughly eleven times the number of Italian Protestants in Rome converted to Catholicism. Warned the report: "Agents of this propaganda don't present themselves as Protestants. They call themselves Christians . . . they use subtle and devious tactics. They insinuate doubts about principles of the True Faith . . . finally they initiate Protestant rites."

* The outgrowth of a heretical sect founded in France by rich Merchant Peter Waldo in 1176, which moved to the Piedmont Alps and became Protestant early in the Reformation.

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