Rome (NEV), June 28, 2017 – In a report about the destruction of Mosul’s mosque by ISIS broadcasted on the first National TV channel RaiUno, the president of the National Trust of Italy, Andrea Carandini, said: “It may seem absurd that Islamic terrorists destroy a mosque, but we must remember that Protestants destroyed Catholic churches during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. The same thing”.
An affirmation to which pastor Luca Maria Negro, president of the Federation of Protestant churches in Italy (FCEI), answered by sending a letter of protest to the newscast director, Andrea Montanari: “We certainly can’t deny that the Reformation of the 16th century produced a strong iconoclastic movement in Europe, which caused the destruction of sacred devotional images and relics in churches; but Carandini’s words, as presented in the TV report, are not only historically simplistic and offensive when affirming ‘Protestantism is equal to ISIS’, but, associated with the images broadcasted they are highly defamatory towards 700 million Protestant believers all over the world. Certainly – continued Negro in the letter sent to Montanari – in the 16th and 17th centuries, when heretics were burned and crusades were launched against religious minorities (like in Calabria, were in 1561 Waldensians were wiped out by Catholic troops), there were robberies and churches devastations by Protestants, but many places of worship remained intact and images were removed or reintroduced, depending on the confessional belonging of the political power. Although compact in condemning the devotion of images and relics, not all Reformers endorsed iconoclasm. The complexity of the historical context was completely absent in Carandini’s statements and was amplified by the editorial choice of the images. I regret this occurs in the year of the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, an anniversary lived in an ecumenical spirit as demonstrated by the inaugural celebration in Lund (Sweden), last October 31, 2016 which saw the participation of Pope Francis”, concluded Negro.
