Waldenses

Long since defunct are the Cathari, the Patarini, the Albigenses, many another sect denounced as heretical by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. But the heretic Waldensian Church, born of social and religious restlessness in the 12th Century, still exists as the world's oldest evangelical Christian body. It was founded by Peter Waldo, a rich Lyons merchant who vowed himself to poverty, defied the Pope by preaching and interpreting the Bible in 1179. Excommunicated along with numerous other heretics in 1184, he attracted a following who believed with him that it was wrong to take oaths or shed human blood, denied with him the Catholic doctrines of purgatory, indulgence, prayers for the dead.

Today the Waldensian Church has members all over the world, some in six U. S. centres, and 30,000 in Italy. Benito Mussolini, always fond of playing off rival groups and institutions against one another, professes to admire the Waldenses (his personal physician is one). To Waldenses in the U. S. last week came good news from Italy. On their churches in Italy, Waldenses have been permitted to glue posters certifying to II Duce's favor: quotations from his law of 1929, which guarantees religious freedom in Italy, and accompanying them a special statement signed by Benito Mussolini: "I know that the Waldenses are Italians by race and of heart, and am an admirer of their history; for their endurance, for their sacrifices, for the spirit of idealism that they have demonstrated."

Furthermore to help Captain Bertinatti, Waldensian pastor attached to the Italian Army in Ethiopia as chaplain, Mussolini invited hard-working Ernesto Comba, head of the Church and professor of systematic theology in the Waldensian Theological Seminary in Rome, to send along another chaplain, a request with which the Moderator gladly complied since, said he, "there are thousands of evangelical Abyssinians."

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