Episcopalians and their ecumenical partners gathered at St. Paul’s Within the Walls in Rome, Italy, before the start of Roma Pride on June 14. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service
[Episcopal News Service] Last year, St. Paul’s Within the Walls made history as the first church in Italy to march in Roma Pride. This year, Episcopalians joined with other Christians in Rome, in the spirit of The Episcopal Church’s welcome of LGBTQ+ full inclusion, with the hope of making a greater impact.
“We are the only Christian representatives who, fortunately, have a church that fully protects and assures the same treatment for LGBTQ people as everyone else,” Conner Drennen, an American originally from Ohio who now lives in Rome and serves on St. Paul’s vestry, told Episcopal News Service.
Tens of thousands of people marched in the June 14 parade. Episcopalians joined with Christians affiliated with REFO, evangelicals from United Methodist, Baptist and Waldensian churches, and Roman Catholics with La Tenda Gionata –Jonathan’s Tent – and Mosiako Roma.
“It’s exciting to partner with the other groups,” Alessandro Ferraccioli, a St. Paul’s member, told ENS. “We are different but linked together.”
The parade was staged in Rome’s Piazza della Repubblica, or the Public Square, a 5-minute walk from the church, the first non-Catholic church built within the ancient walls of Rome, on Via Nazionale. The church is also home to the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center.
In the hours before the parade, members stood outside the church and distributed flyers describing the Rainbow Initiative, Episcopal Migration Ministries’ support for LGBTIQ+ refugees and asylum-seekers, as well as about St. Paul’s, which is “open to all and rejecting none.”
Conner Drennen, Alessandro Ferraccioli and Vincenzo Gulina distribute flyers to passersby outside St. Paul’s Within the Walls in Rome, Italy, ahead of the start of Rome’s Pride parade on June 14. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service
The aim, said Larry Litman, St. Paul’s senior warden, was to raise awareness that there is an Episcopal church in Rome and its inclusive stance and the refugee center’s Rainbow Initiative, which was created in 2023 to focus attention on people who have been forced to leave their countries of origin because of persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In Italy, as is the case worldwide, particularly now as right-wing populist governments are on the rise, to be LGBTQIA+ means to live in fear, to be discriminated against, and, in some places, to be criminalized and to be used as political targets.
Organizers of Roma Pride in their manifesto said: “We are the global resistance, the Pride that won’t bow down, the voice that won’t be silenced, the community that won’t back down.”
June is Pride Month, and it’s celebrated worldwide. The Episcopal Church began Pride Month celebrations and affirmations of LGBTQ+ people with a special livestreamed Eucharist at the Chapel of Christ the Lord at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, New York. June 28 is International LGBT Pride Day, though celebrations are held throughout June.
Last year, St. Paul’s asked to be a part of Roma Pride, and at first, organizers were a little hesitant, but this year they recognized the need for a spiritual presence and reached out to members of St. Paul’s, Ferraccioli said. And because of St. Paul’s connections to the other churches, they decided the simple solution was to ask others to join with them in the march.
To be a Christian in Rome is to be ecumenical, working together not just on LGBTQ+ issues, Manuela Vinay, a member of the Waldensian church, told ENS.
It was the first time Simone Andrzejewski, who came to know REFO about a year ago via the Waldensian Evangelical Church, participated in the Pride Parade.
“I’m very happy to be here as a testimony to LGBTQ people within the faith and different churches,” he said.
-Lynette Wilson is a reporter and managing editor of Episcopal News Service.