wfn.org | Lutherans in Italy elect new leaders, adopt Joint Declaration

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

Integration into Italian context

SESTRI LEVANTE, Italy/GENEVA, 30 April 1998 (lwi) - Pastor of Genoa and San
Remo, Jurgen Astfalk, has been elected new dean of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Italy (ELCI). He succeeds Hartmut Diekmann. Barbel Naeve, Rome's
Lutheran congregation chairperson and Lutheran World Information
correspondent, becomes the new synod president succeeding Hanna Franzoi who
held the office for 15 years.

Naeve, among other things in her inaugural speech, praised the committed
work of her predecessor, and her struggle to integrate Lutherans into
Italy's church life. The "hard-fought for" treaty between the ELCI and
Italian state was to a large extent due to Franzoi's efforts, she said.

The ELCI synod meeting held April 23-25 in Sestri Levante also announced
its agreement to the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Joint Declaration on the
Doctrine of Justification. In their resolution, the synod members welcomed
the document as an important aid to ecumenical conversations within the
Italian context.

The synod members discussed how the ELCI deals with the situation of
wanting to be an Italian church, on the one hand, without giving up its
original identity, on the other. The ELCI is "in the midst of a
transformation from an Evangelical Lutheran Church in Italy with strong
ties to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) to an Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Italy to which the state treaty has given a first coat of paint
in state colors", Diekmann explained. The church's inner conflict is
evident, not least, in the intense discussion about which language should
be spoken.

Integration into the Italian context, made necessary by the state treaty,
has brought about a new situation creating more media interest in the ELCI,
and increasing administrative work.

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Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/