chapter three

A WORLD IN MOTION:
THE PLURALITY OF ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN ITALY

Giuseppe Giordan

One of the most interesting effects of the migrations regarding the European
territory today is that the Orthodox cultural and religious tradition, histori-
cally linked to Eastern Europe, is becoming more and more a phenomenon
that affects the cultural and religious universe of Western Europe. This phe-
nomenon, known as “Diaspora,” that is to say as the “dispersion” of Orthodox
faithful settling outside the canonical territory of their Churches of origin,
leads to the reorganization of the entire Orthodox cultural universe, forcing
it to confront social, cultural, religious, and juridical contexts that are quite
different from those that pertained in their home countries.
Despite contending for second place among the most widespread reli-
gions in Italy, now side-by-side with Islam, the presence of Orthodox Chris-
tianity in Italy is still rarely studied. From the socio-cultural point of view
there is no global, current description of the Orthodox Churches present in
the Italian territory, with the exception of few studies especially of particu-
lar reference to geographical areas or individual historical traditions.1 This
shortcoming is undoubtedly due to some reasons that complicate the recon-
struction of a map capable of illustrating such presence in a sufficiently
reliable way. There are two trends connected with the difficulties that up
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to the recent past are likely to have discouraged scholars from undertaking

1 For a general introduction to the Orthodox, see Morozzo della Rocca (1997), Pacini

(2000), Morini (2002), and Reati (2009). An accurate survey especially of the historical
dimensions and the theological questions of the Orthodox presence in Italy has been edited
by Battaglia (2011), while Introvigne and Zoccatelli (2006) have provided for many years
accurate data concerning the religious pluralism that characterizes our country. We owe
the first empirical study existing in Italy on Orthodoxy, though restricted to the context of
Piedmont, to Berzano and Cassinasco (1999). An edited volume by Christine Chaillot (2005)
offers an interesting historical reconstruction of the spread of the Orthodox Churches in
Western Europe in the twentieth century. Enzo Pace (2011) has recently offered an overview
of the presence of the Orthodox in Italy, suggesting also some data about the different
jurisdictions and the different parishes.
 58 giuseppe giordan

such an investigation. The first of these lies within Orthodoxy itself: it seems
to consist in a plurality of Churches, technically defined as jurisdictions,
which refer to the different patriarchates and to the different autocephalies.
Therefore it is not easy to navigate within this complex world, where diver-
sity is certainly an asset but, in the eyes of the researcher, it might even
generate a sense of loss. As recently pointed out by Kallistos Ware (2005:
47), one of the greatest experts on Orthodoxy in the West, “the Orthodox
form a unity in diversity, though too often diversity is more evident than
unity.”
As if that were not enough, to the complex reconstruction of the vari-
ous jurisdictions forming the Orthodox universe, there must also be added
a differentiation of the various types of presence within the same juris-
dictions. Indeed this last aspect makes it somewhat difficult even simply
to compile a list of the individual parishes present in the territory. Just to
give an example, and this immediately should warn the reader seeing the
maps that will be presented in the following pages, other items must be
added to the already established parishes, such as parishes in the process
of formation, chapels in which celebrations take place only once or twice
a month (or even less), cemetery chapels, and the diaconate in prisons and
hospitals. It is also the case that some parishes or monasteries might shift
from one jurisdiction to another for various reasons—a phenomenon not
at all uncommon in the past and one that has not entirely disappeared even
today.
To this difficulty, so to speak institutional and internal to Orthodoxy,
another one is added of a more general character, which must be taken into
account when reconstructing the presence of Orthodox Churches in Italy.
This is the speed with which migration flows have reshaped the social and
religious panorama of the peninsula since the early 1990s, with a remarkable
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acceleration at the beginning of the present century—a change so fast as to

make any “photograph” that tried to present qualitatively and even better
quantitatively the different religious “minorities” unreliable or incomplete.
As we shall soon see, with the fall of Berlin Wall and the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, the gates of Western Europe were opened to millions
of women and men migrating from the East, bringing with them not only
the hope of improving their living conditions, but also the free practice of
their own cultural and religious traditions. In the great majority of cases,
these refer back to the world of Orthodoxy. Suffice it to say that, from the
data we have collected in the research that will be presented here, almost
three out of four Orthodox parishes present in Italy were established since
2000.
 a world in motion 59

To these two reasons that make the study of Orthodoxy rather complex,
we can probably add another one that affects the desirability of such study
by researchers: it has to do with the visibility of this religion and its rele-
vance in the public debate. This visibility appears evident if we compare
it with Islam: the “newsworthiness” of some news items is conveyed with
immediacy and effectiveness when referring to the protagonists as Muslim,
and this label almost obscures their territorial origins. As to those Chris-
tians who come from Eastern Europe, however, their nationality obscures
their religious identity or puts it definitely into the background. In other
words, television and newspapers will speak of a Romanian, rather than of
a Moldovan or Ukrainian, and never of an Orthodox individual; the exact
opposite is true for those who come from Arab countries. When we hear
about a Muslim it is not always clear whether this refers to a Moroccan
rather than to a Syrian or an Egyptian individual. The reasons for such a
situation are largely due to political issues, although there are also con-
siderations of a more socio-religious and cultural character that affect the
different ways of tying together daily life and one’s religious beliefs, depend-
ing on whether we are talking of Muslim or Orthodox people.
How have we proceeded constructing the maps of the presence of Ortho-
doxy in Italy? First, we made reference to the liturgical calendars that some
jurisdictions update every year: In them we find, beside information of litur-
gical character on the various festivities, also a directory of parishes and of
the pastoral services offered. These calendars, unfortunately, are available
for only a few jurisdictions, therefore the data were integrated with research
on the Web and then verified by personal and telephone contacts.2 The latter
has not always been an easy job, both for the difficulty in finding the relevant
people as well as for the language barrier that in some cases made commu-
nication complicated. In some circumstances, we additionally had to deal,
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if not with some suspicion, at least with an understandable self-restraint in

providing data that could be considered private and not to be publicly dis-
closed.
Included in the lists were the parishes, the communities, the monaster-
ies, but not the diaconica in prisons or hospitals. We have included the
cemetery chapels when they were explicitly recorded in the lists provided

2 I wish to thank Barbara Bertolani and Dimitris Argiropoulos for their painstaking

reconstruction of the parishes’ lists and for having contacted the parish priests in order to
implement our research using a questionnaire. Father Ambrogio Cassinasco assisted with
particular patience and expertise throughout the research process.
 60 giuseppe giordan

by the jurisdictions themselves. More difficult was the choice as to the

churches in which the priests go to celebrate only once or twice a month: in
this case we have put them in our list only when they had specific names and
they were recorded as parishes in the documents of their respective jurisdic-
tions.
For these reasons, therefore, it is important to bear in mind that the
maps we have developed do not claim in the least to be complete and
comprehensive, even if they ambitiously offer for the first time a snap-
shot of the constantly changing situation of the Orthodox Churches in
Italy.
The construction of a database including a kind of directory of the Ortho-
dox parishes present in our country has been complemented with a ques-
tionnaire whose aim was to investigate some segments of the life of the
parishes themselves. In this regard some aspects of the leadership have been
explored, focusing then on both the organizational aspects and some pas-
toral activities that characterize the daily life of the different communities.
The questionnaire has been completed for about one-third of the Orthodox
parishes present in the national territory: if on one hand these data cannot
be considered strictly representative of the whole universe of Orthodoxy
in Italy, on the other hand they are sufficient to outline some features of
this religious confession that, as we will soon see, has experienced unprece-
dented growth in recent years.

The Orthodox Churches in Italy

From the data we have collected, we find there are 16 Orthodox jurisdic-
tions present in Italy today and 355 parishes. As represented by number
of parishes, the largest jurisdictions are are the Patriarchate of Rumania
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(166), the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (84) and the Moscow

Patriarchate (44). All the other jurisdictions, except the Coptic Church that
reckons about twenty, have less than 10 parishes each.
 a world in motion 61

Table 3.1: Orthodox Churches in Italy

Parishes and
Jurisdiction monasteries
Romanian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Rumania), Diocese of 166
Italy
Sacred Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta (Ecumenical 84
Patriarchate of Constantinople)
Russian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Moscow), 44
Administration of the Churches in Italy
Coptic Orthodox Church 21
Greek Orthodox Church of the Calendar of the Fathers—Synod of 9
the Resistant
Archbishopric for the Russian Orthodox Churches in Western 7
Europe (Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate), Deanery of
Italy
Ethiopian Orthodox Church Tewahedo 5
Serbian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Serbia) 4
Romanian Orthodox Church of the Old Calendar 3
Autonomous Orthodox Church of Western Europe and the 3
Americas—Metropolis of Milan and Aquileia
Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Bulgaria) 2
Eritrean Orthodox Church 2
Macedonian Orthodox Church 2
Armenian Apostolic Church 1
Russian Orthodox Church of the Ancient Rite (Metropolis of 1
Belokrinitsa)
Orthodox Church in Italy3 1
Total 355

The distribution of the Orthodox parishes covers the whole national terri-
tory, and there is virtually no region without at least one Orthodox Church.
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Such distribution, however, is not homogeneous. Lazio, Lombardy and Pied-

mont are the regions with the highest number of Orthodox parishes; fol-
lowed by Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Calabria, Tuscany and Sicily. The reason
for these distributions is not to be ascribed to items of a historical nature,
but rather they respond to the migration flows related to the dynamics of
the labor market.

3 We have chosen to keep the name of this jurisdiction even if it has joined the “Metropo-

lis of Milan and Aquileia” which, in turn, seems to have become an Exarchate in association
with the Patriarchate of Moscow.
 62 giuseppe giordan

Table 3.2: Orthodox parishes and monasteries in Italy by region

Parishes and
Regione Province monasteries
Abruzzo Chieti, L’Aquila, Perugia, Teramo 8
Basilicata Matera, Potenza 2
Calabria Cosenza, Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro, 21
Crotone, Vibo Valentia,
Campania Napoli, Salerno, Avellino, Caserta 12
Emilia-Romagna Bologna, Ravenna, Modena, Reggio 31
Emilia, Piacenza, Parma, Ferrara, Rimini,
Forlì-Cesena
Friuli-Venezia Giulia Udine, Trieste, Gorizia, Pordenone 10
Lazio Roma, Frosinone, Latina, Viterbo 57
Liguria Genova, Livorno, la Spezia, Imperia 9
Lombardia Bergamo, Milano, Varese, Brescia, Pavia, 48
Mantova, Como, Cremona, Lecco, Lodi,
Monza e Brianza
Marche Ancona, Ascoli Piceno, Macerata, Pesaro e 9
Urbino
Molise Campobasso, Isernia 3
Piemonte Torino, Alessandria, Novara, 38
Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Vercelli, Cuneo, Asti,
Biella
Puglia Bari, Brindisi, Taranto, Lecce, Foggia, 14
Barletta-Andria-Trani
Sardegna Oristano, Cagliari, Medio Campidano 8
(Villacidro e Sanluri), Sassari, Olbia-Tempio
Sicilia Catania, Palermo, Messina, Caltanissetta, 19
Ragusa, Trapani, Agrigento, Enna, Siracusa
Toscana Pistoia, Pisa, Firenze, Siena, Arezzo, Massa e 20
Carrara, Grosseto, Livorno, Lucca, Prato
Trentino-Alto Adige Bolzano, Trento 4
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Umbria Perugia, Terni 10

Valle d’Aosta Aosta 1
Veneto Venezia, Verona, Vicenza, Padova, Treviso, 29
Belluno, Rovigo
Repubblica di San San Marino 2
Marino
Total 355

To appreciate adequately the scope of such diffusion of the Orthodox

Churches in Italy, however, it is useful to take a step back and examine
some data pertaining to the recent past. As rightly asserted by Ambrogio
Cassinasco (2005), from the sociological point of view such widespread pres-
 a world in motion 63

ence is a “new phenomenon” since, going back to the end of the late nine-
teenth century, the jurisdictions that had places of worship in Italy were only
three: the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Russian Ortho-
dox Church, and the Serbian Orthodox Church.4 Historically, the presence
of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is mainly in Venice, where the church of
Saint George of the Greeks, the most ancient Orthodox church in the Dias-
pora, is located. It was built in the middle of the sixteenth century to assist
the Greeks who were working in the service of the Venetian Republic and
the sailors landing there. The Russian churches, by contrast, were built in
the late 1800s following the Russian nobles who were on holiday in the sea-
side resorts of the Mediterranean and then travelled to the Italian art cities,
notably Rome and Florence. These are the first churches to be built in the
traditional Orthodox architectural style. In those years the Serbian Church
had a single parish in Trieste, which became part of Italy only in the follow-
ing century, at the end of World War I.
Just over a century ago, the Orthodox presence in Italy was limited to a
small number of “foreign chaplaincies” which offered their pastoral services
to the few Orthodox faithful who were in our country. The Russian revo-
lution and the end of World War II mark the first moment of diffusion of
Orthodoxy in many Western European countries, and the same applies to
Italy. It was in these years that the arrival of Russian refugees took place,
who settled not only in the coastal regions and in the art cities, but also in
many other towns in the peninsula; they brought with them the jurisdic-
tional breaches that developed within Russian Orthodoxy, and these have
resulted in a long series of tensions and conflicts over church properties.
It would not be until the 1960s that the first Italian Orthodox parishes
appeared. These, nevertheless, were born and bred in a spontaneous and
sometimes confused way, in the wake of itinerant bishops whose canonical
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incardination was doubtful in many cases. It was a period characterized by

communities frequently changing their jurisdictions, with many of them led
by an Italian Orthodox clergy.
The great change in the Orthodox presence in Italy really came in the
1990s. It was a change that revolutionized such presence not only at a quan-
titative level, but it also initiated the articulate structure of a constellation
of jurisdictions and parishes that resulted in unprecedented visibility, even

4 The Russian Orthodox Church would again become a Patriarchate in 1917, and the

Serbian Church would become so in 1920.

 64 giuseppe giordan

if sometimes it should be seen somehow as a high watermark. It suffices to

browse the various statistical dossiers on immigration by Caritas/Migrantes
to realize that, since the last decade of the last century, the presence of the
Orthodox in our country has been continually increasing, and this is both
an absolute value and a percentage value when compared with other immi-
grants of other religious traditions. Such increase has accelerated further
since 2003, and this is a consequence of regulations introduced the previ-
ous year. Since 2006 the Orthodox immigrants have exceeded the number
of the Catholic ones, and in the following years they have come close to the
number of Muslims. As we know, they are estimates, but they are the only
data available to us to make comparisons over the years.5

Table 3.3: Religious adherence of immigrants in Italy: Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim

Catholics Orthodox Muslims

2001 362.066 198.824 488.300
2002 363.809 204.373 553.007
2003 496.051 446.099 723.188
2004 629.712 565.627 919.492
2005 668.048 659.162 1.009.023
2006 685.127 918.375 1.202.396
2007 775.626 1.129.630 1.253.704
2008 739.000 1.105.000 1.292.000
2009 700.777 1.221.915 1.354.901
2010 876.087 1.404.780 1.504.841

Source: Caritas/Migrantes, Immigration Statistical Dossier. Elaboration on data of

the Ministry of the Interior

According to the estimate of the Caritas/Migrantes report of 2011, the Ortho-

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dox in Italy number 1,404,780 versus 1,504,841 Muslims. In the report of 2010
the Orthodox were 1,221,915, while the Muslims figure stood at 1,354,901.
While commenting on these data of the 2010 report, which recorded an
increase of the Orthodox over the previous year, Giancarlo Perego and Gian-
romano Gnesotto (2010: 207) argued that “in the hypothesis that this trend
remains constant, in three years the Orthodox are bound to overcome the

5 In its 2012 report, CESNUR of Turin suggests another criterion for counting according

to which we arrive at an estimate of the Orthodox presence in Italy that is lower than that
proposed by Caritas/Migrantes. In this chapter I have opted to use the estimates of the latter
organization because they are the ones to which we normally refer in our debates on these
issues.
 a world in motion 65

Muslims, while subsequently the expected decline of flows from Eastern

Europe will cause a reversal of positions.” Again according to the last Car-
itas/Migrantes statistical dossier of 2011, among the Orthodox, the most
represented national groups are those coming from Romania (841,000),
the Ukraine (168,000), Moldova (122,000), Macedonia (49,000). and Albania
(42,000).

Orthodoxy in Italy: A Few Characteristics

As mentioned above, the compilation of the directories of the various Ortho-

dox parishes present in our country was followed by structured question-
naire research.6 One hundred twelve (of 355 parishes contacted) returned
the compiled questionnaires. Such response rate, although significant, does
not allow us to universalize the outcomes we have collected, nor to disaggre-
gate the data according to the various jurisdictions. It does give, however, a
reliable springboard for some considerations about certain trends that may
be tackled in further investigations in greater detail.
A first relevant datum that connects directly with what is indicated in
the previous paragraph concerns the year of establishment of the parishes:
3 out of 4 are young, if not very young parishes. As can be seen from Figure 1,
72% were established after 2000, 13% in the 1990s, 4 % in the 1980s, 2 % in
the 1970s. The churches that we call “historical” (established before 1970)
constitute 8%.
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Figure 3.1: Founding year of the parish (112 respondents, values in percent)

6 The data were collected in the year 2011.

 66 giuseppe giordan

Another significant element is the ownership of the worship places: re-

garding the parishes that have responded, 73 % are hosted in a site granted
by Catholics (with the recursive formula “with gratuitous renewable bail-
ment”), while 27% have churches or properties (even just rooms or garages)
either given on loan by municipalities or by other boards (see Figure 2).
Actually it is a fact that shows how close (and in many cases friendly) the
relationship with the Catholic Church is, even if such assessment should be
further specified according to the various jurisdictions and the local con-
texts.
Again as regards worship places, it is to be noted that some buildings are
already being planned and others are under construction: therefore in the
coming years some Orthodox churches are very likely to arise that will make
the presence of the Orthodox Christians visible in our country even from the
architectural point of view, with their special golden domes.

Figure 3.2: Has the parish site been granted by Catholics? (110 respondents, values
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in percent)

Another section of the questionnaire examined the delicate question of

leadership. Eighty percent of the priests are married, while twenty percent
are monks (Figure 3). The latter are primarily in the Ecumenical Patriarchate
of Constantinople and the Patriarchate of Moscow.
 a world in motion 67

Figure 3.3: Marital status of the pastors (107 respondents, values in percent)

Regarding the age of the parish priests, the fact that immediately catches the
eye is the young age of the pastors, especially when compared to the Roman
Catholic Church. Here, 7 out of 10 are less than 45 years old. Specifically,
64 percent of the parish priests are aged between 31 and 45; 23 percent are
between 46 and 60. Those younger than 30 and those who assert they are
more than 60 years old each account for six percent.
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Figure 3.4: Age of parish priests (109 respondents, values in percent)

The question about the nationality of the parish priests was one of the
most controversial issues. Many interviewees answered reluctantly or chose
not to answer, since it was regarded as a question touching personal, pri-
vate matters. Among the interviewees who chose to respond, eighty per-
cent of the pastors are not Italian citizens: They are mostly Romanian and
 68 giuseppe giordan

Moldovan, although they are also Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Ethiopian and
Georgian. The Orthodox pastors of Italian citizenship mostly belong to the
Ecumenical Patriarchate and to the Patriarchate of Moscow.
Among the pastors of foreign nationalities, eighty percent have resided
in Italy for a relatively short time, as shown below.

Figure 3.5: Year of arrival in Italy (77 respondents, values in percent)

From the point of view of theological education, three out of four are grad-
uates in theology. Of these, a significant number say they also have one or
more post-graduate specialties (Ph.D. in theology, patristics, Master’s degree
in canon law, liturgy and pastoral, post-graduate courses); about 15 percent
have a level of theological training that is lower than a university degree.
In conclusion, the data we have illustrated outline the profile of a pastor
more often married than single or monk, foreign citizen, young at the age
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between 31 and 45, although there are also Italians with a high average level
of theological education.
Another core theme of our research concerned the life of the parishes:
we have investigated which are the most used languages in the liturgy,
how many participants there are in the Sunday and the Easter rites, the
composition of the faithful and their nationalities, the yearly number of
baptisms and marriages, the parishes’ activities in terms of opening days
during the week, catechesis and/or Sunday school, social and/or welfare
activities, participation in ecumenical initiatives.
The most widespread languages in the celebrations were Romanian (un-
surprisingly), followed by Italian and then, with a much smaller spread, we
 a world in motion 69

find Greek, Slavonic (ecclesiastic Slavonic) and Russian;7 less common, yet
still used, are by frequency: Albanian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Arabic,
Amharic, and Ge"ez.
Summing up the data from the 109 parishes answering the question, the
Sunday participants recorded by the parish priests were 11,200, equal to
an average of 103 Sunday faithful per parish. But perhaps more interesting
than the absolute numbers and the averages, is the analysis that shows
that in 50% of the cases they are parishes of small size, with less than 50
participants in the Sunday services (Figure 6).

Figure 3.6: Participants in Sunday services (109 respondents, values in percent)

As expected, these parishes are very busy on Easter Days, during which the
number of recorded participants multiplies practically by ten, passing from
11,200 to almost 110,000 units, and the average per parish increases from 103
Sunday faithful to more than a thousand. Projecting these data of the Sunday
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participation on the entire universe of the Italian Orthodox parishes, we can

assume that the weekly participation in the divine liturgy is limited to 2.5
percent of the Orthodox present in Italy.
In most parishes the faithful are more women than men, and this result
is consistent with the dynamics of the labor market that, with regard to the
countries of Eastern Europe, is characterized by the demand for housemaids
(Figure 7):

7 In the Russian Orthodox tradition the most archaic language is used for the celebra-

tions, that is ecclesiastic Slavonic, while modern Russian is used in preaching and in catech-
esis.
 70 giuseppe giordan

Figure 3.7: Composition of the faithful by gender (110 respondents, values in percent)

The most common nationalities among the faithful, again according to the
priests’ answers, are Romanian, followed at some distance by Ukrainians,
Moldovans and Russians; then followed by Greeks, Montenegrins, Serbs,
Bulgarians, Albanians and Georgians; a minority bit is composed of people
from Byelorussia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Poland and Macedonia, Egypt, Cyprus,
and even from Italy itself.
As to the baptisms in 2010, they appear to number about 4,300, with
an average of 47 baptisms per parish. (Only 92 parishes responded to the
question, however. In some cases, we considered void answers could also
possibly mean “zero baptisms”). Among the baptisms we also counted the
conversions claimed by some priests just on the sidelines of this question.
It is important to highlight the fact that 38 % of the parishes claim to
have celebrated less than 10 baptisms in 2010. Compared to some relatively
few large metropolitan parishes, there are many small and medium sized
parishes.
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In regard to marriages, the average percentage turns out to be 6.75 mar-

riages per year per parish (the 104 interviewed pastors claim they celebrated
702 in total).
Forty-two percent of the parishes remain open throughout the week,
while in 37% of cases they are open only on Sundays and in 17 % they offer
their services to the faithful few days a week. Perhaps this issue is to be
related with the fact that many parish priests, as we will see farther on, earn
their own living doing a secular job and, therefore, during the week they
cannot look after the parish on an ongoing basis.
 a world in motion 71

Figure 3.8: Baptisms celebrated in 2010 (92 respondents, values in percent)

In 8 out of 10 parishes catechesis activities or Sunday schools take place;

in 7 parishes out of 10 also social or welfare activities are carried on, often
in collaboration with parish and diocesan Catholic associations (e.g. Caritas
groups) or local organizations. Among the social or welfare activities carried
out by the parishes, the most popular is the distribution of clothes, food, and
financial aid; the second is assistance to detainees in prisons and CPT and
visits to the sick in hospital; the third is counters where people can apply
for homes or jobs. With much lower frequency, the Orthodox Churches
in Italy offer their faithful listening centers, help in the administrative-
bureaucratic-legal field, teach the Italian language or translate documents,
raise money for emergencies (intended for areas affected by natural disas-
ters both in their countries and in Italy), assist students, organize national
festivities and volunteering to help the elderly, provide free medical care.
Almost 90% of the surveyed parishes are involved in initiatives and meet-
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ings of an ecumenical character in a more or less regular and constant

way.
A final set of questions in the questionnaire aimed at investigating the
organization of these parishes, within themselves as well as concerning the
relations linking them to each other.
With regard to the economic sustenance of the parish priests, we pro-
posed four types of answer: offerings from the faithful, support from the
Church, secular work, and “other.” Six out of ten parish priests say they earn
their own living through only one of these modalities, while in 40 % of cases
the pastors live on mixed forms combining the proposed modalities with
each other. Summing up all the answers (therefore both the answers of those
 72 giuseppe giordan

who have only one source of income and of those who put more than one
together), we get the outcomes that emerge in Figure 9:

Figure 3.9: Economic sustenance of the parish priests (frequency responses)

The majority of Churches or parishes are unable to provide fully for their
pastors, who support themselves and their families even through secular
jobs. The types of work performed by these pastors are the most diverse: post
office clerks or hospital stewards, managing directors in high schools, teach-
ers, translators, personnel managers, persons in charge of family homes,
accountants, drivers, gardeners, masons, engineering workers, carpenters,
laborers, painters of icons. As to the item “other,” under this heading those
priests are included who support themselves with Italian pensions, salaries
granted by the Greek government, or with their wives’ salaries.
More than 80 percent of parishes have pastoral councils that work with
the pastors in the administration of the parishes. In most cases (49 %) the
council is made up of a number of councillors ranging from 6 to 10; in 27
percent of cases it is made up of less than 6 councillors; in 20 percent of cases
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it has more than ten councillors. The parishes that do not have a pastoral
council base this decision on the claim that the multiethnic composition of
the faithful would make decision-making within the council too complex.
They prefer to debate and make decisions at assembly, after the Sunday
service.
With regard to the training of young people, there are more parishes that
do not have a person in charge of the task, apart from the parish priest,
than those that have such person. The activities that are offered to the
young pertain, first of all and to a greater extent, to the area of religious
education: catechism, Biblical readings and meditations, Sunday school,
pilgrimages, retreats and trips to places of Orthodox interest in Italy. Sec-
 a world in motion 73

ond, in a less marked but still significant way, these activities concern cul-
tural education (language lessons, geography and history of the countries
of origin, twinnings and contacts with secular and religious questions of
the countries of origin, choral groups, public holidays of the countries of
origin). Finally, though less frequently, they take care of the recreational
and sport activities and of the human formation of the young (“oratory”
activities, according to the Catholic terminology used by one of the inter-
viewees): races and games, a magazine for young people, after school-hours
activities, volunteering, thematic meetings on youth problems. One last
issue, curious but significant of the enterprise and the dynamism of some
of these parish communities, is that one out of four parishes has a web-
site.

Conclusions

This is a new fact from the sociological point of view: in coming years, the
presence of Orthodox Christianity in Italy will have to face a process of sta-
bilization and institutionalization that will have to come into contact with a
few nodes of particular relevance for what concerns both the relationships
with the Italian state, and the majority religion, Catholicism.
From the legal point of view, last July a big step forward was taken con-
cerning the relations between one jurisdiction and the Italian State: Law
126/2012 sanctioned the agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of
Constantinople (Holy Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Exarchate of
Southern Europe). It is an institutional step that will allow the ministers of
the Ecumenical Patriarchate to celebrate marriages even with civil validity,
to teach their religion in private schools, as well as to gain access to the dis-
tribution of the “8 per mille” income. These are all changes that will have an
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impact not only on the visibility of the Orthodox outside their boundaries,
but also on the internal relations among the various jurisdictions.
On the more strictly religious side, the relations with the Catholic world
are another ground on which the Orthodox in Italy will have to measure
swords. The fraternal relations at the ecumenical level are good, even if the
collaboration with the Catholic Church varies from jurisdiction to jurisdic-
tion. They are well aware of the possibility that the second generations may
prefer Catholicism as a vehicle for integration into Italian culture and soci-
ety: it is a phenomenon that will lead to competition at the organizational
level for what concerns catechesis as well as for what concerns such other
activities as recreation and welfare.
 74 giuseppe giordan

The legal and the ecumenical dimensions do not encompass all the chal-
lenges that Orthodoxy will have to face in the near future. Perhaps the most
interesting challenge is the more properly cultural aspect, one that shows
the Orthodox in Diaspora committed to rethinking themselves in order to go
beyond the never ending question of nationalisms, where the history of one
nation utterly overlaps its religious tradition. It is a dynamic force that has
worked in the countries of origin, but that can scarcely be effective in a for-
eign country, further shattering a reality that is already a minority reality. It
is a challenge that takes place entirely within the Orthodox in Diaspora now,
and on whose outcome the possibility of seeing the birth of a new, unique,
properly Italian Orthodox experience will depend.

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