Rome, January 26, 2018 (NEV / CS04) – In a letter sent on January 24, the president of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI), pastor Luca Maria Negro, wanted to express the deep spiritual closeness to the president of the Union of Jewish Communities (UCEI), Noemi Di Segni. “In this year’s Memorial Day there are three celebrations that speak to our conscience”, wrote pastor Negro referring to the 80th anniversary of the racial laws enactment in 1938 as “one of the darkest and most shameful moments in our Country”. The second reference is to the 70th anniversary of the Italian Republic Constitution born “from the ashes and the denial of previous history”; the third, is the anniversary of the 170 years since the granting of civil rights to the Jewish people and to the Waldensians, by King Carlo Alberto in 1848.
“We believe that this year’s Memorial Day on January 27th is also an opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental values of our Constitution, especially at a time when in public and political fields there are those who launch appeals to defend the ‘white race’, using terms that make us sink back into the darkness of the past and make us worry for the superficiality and the impudence with which they are used”.
Referring to the granting of the civil rights anniversary, Negro emphasized: “This memory unites the Protestant and Jewish communities that live in Italy as minorities who have suffered discrimination and persecution in the past, even though with different values”.
The message ends by reiterating the friendship that binds the two faith communities through “past history, commitment to the affirmation of constitutional rights in our Country and the common faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”.
