Laurie Spurr, Torre Pellice, Italy, July 16 (ENI) - At the foot of the Alps in northwestern Italy, leaders of Reformed churches from around the world were welcomed into the heartland of one of the world's oldest Protestant churches and one of Europe's smallest denominations.

The executive committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches gathered for 10 days this month in the small town of Torre Pellice in one of the Waldensian valleys of the Piedmont region stretching from the Turin plains up into the mountains towards France.

The valleys are named after the church that has survived there, in spite of on and off persecution, for 800 years, at the edge of a country dominated by the Roman Catholic church.

"We are probably the oldest religious dissidents in the world," Rev Gianni Genre, moderator of the Waldensian Evangelical Church, told the WARC executive committee, referring to the denomination's medieval history as church reformers.

With roots extending back to the 1170s, the church has the longest history of any member denomination in the Reformed world alliance.

About 20 years ago it united with Italian Methodists, and today has about 30,000 members in various towns throughout the country, half of them in the Piedmont region.

In the Torre Pellice valley, most of the 4,000 residents have some affiliation with the denomination, Genre told the Warc executive committee, speaking at Torre Pellice's classical-style Casa Valdese meeting hall.

Behind him, a giant mural delivers a strong message. A book perched in the branches of a gnarled oak open to reveal a verse from the book of Revelation, "Faithful unto death", and below the tree are the biblical words used as a sort of motto in Waldensian churches: Lux Lucet in Tenebris (The light shineth in the darkness).

The verse is found on walls of Waldensian churches from Turin to the mountain village of Prali. A similar message - Post Tenebras Lux (After darkness, light) - is found on the Reformation monument in Geneva, Switzerland, home of John Calvin's Protestant Reformation, a movement the Waldensians joined in 1532.

The mural in the Casa Valdese was painted in 1939 to mark the 250th anniversary of the "Glorious Return" of 1689, when surviving Waldensians trekked back to the Piedmont valley, having taken refuge in neighbouring countries to escape a massacre of Protestants that had been ordered by the Duke of Savoy.

The church has always been known for the importance it places on liberty of conscience.

"We think that individual freedom is extremely important," Rev Claudio Pasquet, Waldensian pastor in Torre Pellice, told ENI.

The church accepts divorce and permits divorced people to remarry. In the 1970s and 1980s, it opposed one referendum that would have abolished the Italian law allowing divorce, and another one that would have got rid of a law permitting abortion, both of which failed. The church instead decided to engage to make the latter law unnecessary, Pasquet explained.

Today Waldensians faces new challenges in addition to providing the social services - schools, hospitals and homes for the elderly - for which it is renowned.

One of the biggest is helping to settle a strong wave of immigration to Italy, mainly from West Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Many immigrants were Methodist or Presbyterian in their home countries, and when they arrive in Italy, come to the Waldensian Church, explained Rev Salvatore Ricciardi, pastor of the Waldensian church in Bergamo, and a former member of the Warc executive committee.

When they open the church doors, they discover an unfamiliar style of worship, a European liturgy some find "cold", said Ricciardi.

As well as providing immigrants with social services, Waldensian churches are also trying to help them integrate into their communities. What they are trying to avoid "is immigrant churches forming their own congregations", Ricciardi said, explaining: "That would be divisive rather than ecumenical."

The Waldensian church invited a Methodist pastor from Ghana to spend four years visiting churches attended by Ghanaian worshippers, and has ordained African ministers to serve in both black and white congregations.

"We need to know the needs of people coming from far away countries to live here," Ricciardi said. "On the other hand, the Ghanaian people need to understand that even if [we have a] different way of worshipping, the Reformed position is basically the same."

"The church is larger than the walls of my parish," he continued. "Churches must be places [that are] multicultural and multiethnic."

The Waldensian church dates back to the 12th century movement founded by Peter Valdes, a merchant from Lyon who gave away his fortune and started preaching.

He and his followers - itinerant preachers - were known by their good works and voluntary poverty. They were declared heretics and excommunicated for preaching unofficially.

Still a minority today, the Waldensian church "needs to feel solidarity" with Protestants from world bodies such as the World Alliance of Reformed Churches or the World Council of Churches, Ricciardi explained. "This helps us very much to realize we are part of a universal church."

:: The Vatican's observer at the Warc gathering, Rev John Radano, in a brief address to the Warc executive committee on Monday, seemed to recognize the troubled history between the Roman Catholic church in Italy and the country's minority Protestant community.

In words of greeting on behalf of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Radano referred to the "separations which have plagued us for centuries", pointing out that Catholics and Protestants "nonetheless share a common heritage".

"Here in Torre Pellice, it is impossible to be here without realizing an important part of the ecumenical movement is the healing of memory," the Vatican representative said. [959 words]

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