The birth of the reality of Christian homosexuals in Italy

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Reflections by Giuliana Arnone* taken from her degree thesis on "The difficult balance between action and contemplation: strategies for recognizing a group of believing homossexuals", Ca 'Foscari University of Venice, master's degree course in cultural anthropology, ethnology, ethnolinguistic, October 2013, pp.45-52

In Italy first year, first day, first moment (Pini, 2011: 68) of the birth of the homosexual movement, it was April 5, 1972 'When gay and lesbians mobilized and protested against a conference of sexology - a small sum of the homophobic commonplaces that were passed off as science by doctors and psychologists (Barilli, 1999: 49), which took place at the Sanremo casino. They also managed to enter and read an intervention.

Also in Italy, therefore, the echo of overseas revolts will arrive and unpublished associative forms such as outside will be born! (Italian Revolutionary Homosexual Revolutionary Homosexuals, the first Italian homosexual movement in 1971, of radical political imprint. In this regard, Angelo Pezzana's editorial in issue 24 of June 1971 of the weekly 'Panorama' says:
For the first time [in Italy] the homosexual enters the protagonist scene, he manages his story firsthand [...]. He talks about himself to others who are like him [no one will come to us what we are and how we are from shitty newspapers that use us as laboratory mice. The great awakening of homosexuals has begun. It was up to many others before us. Jews, black (remember?). Now it's up to us. And the awakening will be immediate, contagious, beautiful (in Barilli, 1999: 51

In this context, and with the development of what could be defined as a 'homosexual consciousness', a few years later, in Italy, i Groups of believing homosexuals. They, as we will see, despite representing an heterogeneous reality whose identity remains closely connected with the negotiation with the context of belonging, share with Dignity The attitude towards homosexual identity, seen as substantially 'positive' and, more generally, have in common the symbolic responses advanced in the face of the accusation of the Church concerning sexuality, procreation and marriage as part of human nature.
The birth of Italian Catholic homosexual groups, at least as organized realities with explicit purposes, can be traced back to 1980. This, in fact, was the year in which it was organized at the Ecumenical Center of Agape, in Prali (to) the first conference on faith and homosexuality. This conference was the result of a work carried out by Don Franco Berbero e Ferruccio Castellano [19] An important name for the gay community, with which he came into contact in the mid -seventies, so much so that, after years, on the occasion of Turin Pride 2006, a working group was formed, made up of representatives of homosexual groups, in view of the conference A scandalous loyalty? - Love in the gay and lesbian couple - believers and non -believers in comparison, of which a dossier was made. Here we read: A boy from Torre Pellice, Ferruccio Castellano, engaged in the parish and homosexual, asks his parish priest because he cannot say that he is such, because he cannot even live his homosexuality emotionally and continue to be a good Catholic, a good parishioner. The parish priest does not know what to say and sends him to the bishop and he too feels unprepared; But he tells him: 'Go to Turin, there is a somewhat strange priest who deals with discomfort and similar things, try to hear from him'.
Ferruccio thus turns to Don Luigi Ciotti, of the Abele group, and you hear: I also don't know much about it but I give you all the space you want to organize something to try to understand more and to help those who struggle like you.
Thus was born the collaboration between Ferruccio, Don Ciotti and the Abele group (see: Torino Pride working group, 2006: 4)
Don Ciotti is a personality linked to the Catholic and voluntary dissent at the Abele group of Turin who, since 1965, has been dealing with help from drug addiction, prostitutes, minors and, more generally, offers assistance to marginalized or discriminated people [20].
By Catholic dissent we mean that movement that develops with the end of the Second Vatican Council, accused by the movement of not having been able to renew the Church despite the declared objectives. In particular, it was born after the publication of the encyclical of Pope Paul VI Humanae Vitae (July 1948) which considered the use of artificial contraception for Catholics illegal. Movements were born, linked to a political ideology of the left, i.e. the basic communities, which are inspired by the Christian communities of the origins, which proposed a more evangelical ideal of church, characterized by a political and social commitment addressed to the poor, which provides for the full active participation of the laity involved and which opposes a church considered distant by the Gospel and by the announcement of renewal brought by the Council. Although the work of Catholic homosexual groups cannot be defined as dissent, so intended, since it does not seek a contestation space outside the Church, but a recognition inside (where they seek it), the basic communities have always been very close to homosexuals. The same Don Franco Barbero, which represents one of the reference points of the Catholic dissent in Italy, and which gave birth to the Agape camp, created the basic community of Pinerolo Viottoli where he devoted himself to the pastoral care of homosexual people.

Franco Barbero writes: "It was 1977 when I had the good fortune to meet Ferruccio Castellano, a young man -sighted young man who often reached me by car from Turin. An intense communication was born with him. We had, in truth, a 'crazy' idea: why not organize a national conference on faith and homosexuality? But the first contacts gave us only a return of sewn mouths and closed doors. One evening of summer 1979 we went up to Agape and presented to the shepherd Eugenio Rivoir, then director of the Ecumenical Center of Agape, our proposal. It was immediately understood between us ... We had to talk about it, of course, but a door opened. Note: those were years in which the Abele group did not yet exist and in Italy, in our knowledge, there was no organized group of Catholic homosexuals. On 13 - 15 June 1980 a highly participated conference was held in Agape, of which the documents exist. It was an event of freedom, joy and hope that increased, albeit very slowly, new reflections and new proposals " (Geraci, 2010)

The Agape's conference will gradually start a chain reaction that involves the birth of several groups. In the same year, thanks also to the work of Don Domenico Pezzini, a priest from the diocese of Lodi, the first group of Catholic homosexuals in Italy was born in Milan: 'The ford. In this regard, Don Pezzini says: "[...] At the end of August I found one of his letter [refers to Giovanni dell'Orto, a gay activist who worked at the Abele group] with the list of participants in the Agape field: he reported that a nice number was from Milan and proposed to do something trying to contact people discreetly. I decided to welcome the suggestion. So it was that on 20 December 1980 we found ourselves in the house of one of us [..] The result of the meeting was the common will to meet us regularly once a month [...] unbeknownst to each other, Ferruccio gathered in Turin [...] the first friends who would give life to the Davide group (ibidem)

If Agape represented a meeting place reserved for believing homosexual people, where he substantially refused 'Any form of visibility and they postponed all the journalists who went up to Prali, in the unnecessary attempt to know something more ' (ibidem), subsequently the opportunities for comparison with the outside world grew.
In 1982 a seminar began entitled 'Be homosexual', which takes place in Assisi and which ends in 1985.
A year later the ford participates in the foundation ofEuropean Forum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christian Groups, which was born in Paris in 1982 and which deals with the rights of Christian homosexual, lesbian and transsexuals and who organizes annually (day that coincides more or less with the ascension of Jesus) a meeting in a European capital, where all the Catholic homosexual groups gather that have joined the forum [21].

A few years later, Don Domenico Pezzini moves away from the Il Guado group and in 1986 he founded the source. This split is relevant since it will generate another approach, different from that present in the ford, 'characterized by a large and first welcome of homosexual people ' (Teisa, 2002: 9) [22] to focus mainly on spiritual research. In this context, therefore, ''The homosexual tendency is relativized and becomes only one of the elements of the speech, which ranges from the rules of friendship and prayer (Ibidem: 94).
This approach, in fact, characterizes some groups that will be born later, like the group on the way of Bologna, the source of Rome and, again, the same group Emmanuele. The source, in fact: "It is characterized by the priority given to spiritual research in a context of experienced friendship. Most of its activities are based on the interpersonal exchange between the people who make up the group, and therefore on the mutual comparison, aimed at autotransformation. In this context, the homosexual tendency is relativized and becomes only one of the elements of the speech, which ranges from the rules of friendship to prayer [...] the source, is then characterized, compared to other groups, due to the fact that it does not welcome all homosexual people indiscriminately, but only those people who want to take a serious and constant path of growth. Therefore rejects homosexual people who approach by curiosity only, those that are not compatible with group life and those that are in pathological situations or in any case delicate to be integrated into the group (ibidem: 94)

The group of Padua was born in conjunction which will be hosted by the Valdese Church until 1999, the year in which the word of Vicenza will be born and from whose ashes will be born. In Italy, the Protestant churches, and in particular the Valdese one, have allowed the development of the groups itself. Initially with the Agape camp, and subsequently offering their offices to different groups such as at the Guado in Milan (which now resides in another place).
The open position of the Protestant Church, especially the Valdese one, compared to the Catholic parishes that host Catholic homosexual groups, is certainly the consequence of the most open protesting positions, but also of its own position free from the Catholic magisterium and independent of the Church of Rome. Catholic parishes, as we will see, often cannot declare themselves openly, since they would risk no longer being able to operate by hosting the groups in their offices. This, however, depends on the peculiarity of the social contexts, on the relationship that the parish has with the diocese of the city and with the bishop himself.

In the meantime, in the nineties, some groups begin to advertise themselves. This is the case of La Fonte, which celebrates his presence in the Mission magazine today. Similarly, the word will carve out visibility through announcements through a Babylony homosexual monthly magazine. The voice of a Catholic homosexual group in an Italian homosexual magazine, purely secular, shows a mixture, at least at the beginning, between the Italian homosexual movement and Catholic gays, as evidenced by the same activism of Ferruccio Castellano.

In the south, at least until the nineties, forms of social aggregation had not been developed by Catholic homosexuals. In Sicily, however, Arcigay was born informally in Palermo on 9 December 1980 from an idea by Don Marco Bisceglia, a Catholic priest of the area of ​​dissent, as a reaction to the emotion aroused by the discovery of the body of a couple of young lovers killed in Giarre, in the province of Catania, due to their gay relationship [23].
These events are important since they show the mixture between secular homosexual movement, activist, and the movement of believing homosexuals. In fact, in fact, they fit into a very specific historical context, namely that of Italy of the eighties, where the homosexual movement, tied up to then to the extreme left movements, had known the first aggregative processes, such as the outside!, Founded in 1971 closely connected to the radical party. The experience will end precisely in 1982, after a crisis of relations with the party itself.
In Catania, near Giarre, in 1990, the Group of The Fratelli dell'Elpis at the Church of the Most Holy Crucifix of good death will be born.

In those years, various conferences begin to hold. Starting with that of Assisi of 1982 which has for 'being homosexual' theme, another conference will be created in Turin on the theme 'Catholic sexual morality: from the Bible to the Magisterium'. Other conferences follow and therefore the opportunities for visibility, such as the conference on 'Fede and homosexuality' of 1989 in Monteforte Irpino, which will repeat itself until 1992. In the meantime, the new proposal group was born in Rome, the branches of Naples and also Chiara and Francesco in Udine.

With the development of other local realities, the need was born to find coordination capable of strengthening the work of individual groups. In 199424, thus, the Coci, the coordination of Catholic homosexual groups, which will find hospitality at the Cassero, the national headquarters of the Arcigay. The Guado of Milan, Davide and Gionata of Turin, the drop of Cremona, the archipelago of Reggio Emilia, the meeting of Padua, the listening to Verona, Chiara and Francesco di Udine and the source of Rome, some of which were born precisely with the early nineties, are part of it.
The question of general coordination will be problematic in the years to come. The vitality of the groups and their numerical increase often represent in reality reasons for detachment, rather than union. However, with the Coci, the opportunities for visibility are growing. Two national conferences are organized relating to the theme of faith and homosexuality. The first in Rome, in 1995, at the headquarters of the Valdese theological faculty, and the second in Milan [24].
The dates risk not being precise. The interviews, the report of believers of believers of 2010, the sources on the Internet show vintages that often contradict themselves. This confusion is perhaps given by the fact that, to date, nobody has ever dealt with writing a systematic story of believing homosexual groups in Italy. Often it is precisely the members of the groups who try to reconstruct their history. Gianni Geraci himself provided me bibliographic material that he himself had written (moreover, he himself drawn up the voice of the history of believing homosexuals in Italy on Wikipedia) in 1999 [25].

In those years, in 1998, other associative realities were born, such as the group 'Renaissance of Pordenone and Narciso and Boccadoro in Rimini and the same group Emmanuele of Padua. The Evangelical network faith and homosexuality (REFO), with the aim of creating a support and coordination network of the evangelical churches that welcome homosexual people.

During the 2000s, other associative realities developed, in almost all regions of Italy. In Florence the Kairos Group and Trento the Ressa group. In the center north, in fact 'The only regions in which there are no groups are Friuli, Valle d'Aosta and Umbria, while in the South some very significant experiences were born such as in Naples, Palermo and Bari' (Donatio, 2010: 209). These are the years in which, however, the existence of the Coci is questioned.
An important personality within the Coci was Gianni Geraci who was, for many years, the president of the coordination. Following pressures of some representatives, who complained of the profound heterogeneity of the groups and therefore their substantial incompatibility, resigned with a letter.

Despite the eclissation of the Coci, its energies will be merged into the Gionata.org portal, an online portal of faith and homosexuality born in 2007 and managed by volunteers, who tries to create a network of support and circulation of information and experiences of the various groups, without however aspiring to coordinate them. Giona It is a virtual portal (...), in which volunteers participate that write their opinions, small articles and essays, concerning the history of the various groups, the events organized by them, of the comments on current articles that deal with the theme of homosexuality and faith. It is a real contact network, in which information circulate to increase sensitivity and self -awareness. These volunteers will give life, a few years later, to Forum of believing homosexual groups (FCOI), carried out ad Albano Laziale on 25-26 March 2010, during which a relationship was drawn up to analyze the current situation of believing homosexual groups in Italy, through the dissemination of a questionnaire capable of collecting quantitative data on the experience of groups, concerning the numerical composition and the relationship with the local community.

This forum will have, since 2010, two -year cadence. The next forum is being organized, which will therefore be held in 2014.
As it appears from Report presented to the first Italian forum of homosexual Christians, the reality of believing groups in Italy is a highly varied reality and strongly linked to the local contexts of belonging (see: Progetto Gionata, 2010). Each group has a different organization inside, some have less structured and informal situations, others have equipped themselves with a legally recognized statute.
The average age is varied, but oscillates between thirty and fifty years. The presence of women, albeit growing, is clearly lower than the male counterpart. Their presence in the Italian territory, however, does not seem to decrease. Indeed, new realities are being born, like the Trieste group, Rùah project, born in 2011. The history of these groups is, in short, being executed. We are witnessing its construction.

The last stage concerns participation in the national gay pride held in Palermo on 22 June 2013, Of some groups of Italian believing homosexuals, including the (group) Ali d'Aquila in Palermo who, through the organization of events inherent in homosexuality and faith, managed to carve out a specific public space of action, parading proud and proud during the parade.

Similarly, on the occasion of the Gay Pride of Vicenza, which took place a few days before the national team, that is, on June 15, 2013, the group The word paraded in the middle of the procession bringing, smiling, the banner with its name.

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19 Castellano knew Don Franco Berbera since the former often went to Turin in his parish. The priest, for his open positions against homosexuals and his attitude of open criticism of Catholic doctrine, was excommunicated in 2002. Thus he founds the basic community of Pinerolo where he will continue his welcome work to homosexuals.
20 For more information, refer to the site: http://www.gruppoabele.org
21 for more information http://www.euroforumlgbtchchistians.eu/
22 When I met Gianni Geraci, he told me that their group, the ford, is very open and also welcomes people with evident psychological disorders. The Emmanuele group, on the other hand, as we will see, follows a slightly more 'pezzinian' approach and aims to deepen its path of spiritual growth, refusing to set itself as 'self-help group'.
23 This story was also told by Mattia, coordinator of the Youth Group of the Arcigay in Padua during one of the Wednesday meetings in which I participated and that I could consult on the official website of the Arcigay: http://www.arcigay.it/chi-siamo/storia/
25 Dates risk not being precise. The interviews, the report of believers of believers of 2010, the sources on the Internet show vintages that often contradict themselves. This confusion is perhaps given by the fact that, to date, nobody has ever dealt with writing a systematic story of believing homosexual groups in Italy. Often it is precisely the members of the groups who try to reconstruct their history. Gianni Geraci himself provided me bibliographic material that he himself had written.

* Giuliana Arnone She graduated from the Cà Foscari University of Venice in cultural anthropology with a thesis entitled "The difficult balance between action and contemplation strategies of recognition of a group of believing homosexuals"(October 2013) and achieved the doctorate in geographical and anthropological historical studies at the University of Padua with an ethnographic research concerning the reality of Christian LGBT in Italy entitled"All a matter of reconciliation: an ethnographic gaze on the paths of recognition of the Christian LGBT movement in Italy"(2016). He edited the search for the Italian Christian forum "2016 Report on LGBT Christians in Italy"(September 2016) and wrote with Paola Coppi and Pasquale Quaranta the chapter entitled"A testimony: LGBT groups and churches in contemporary Italy"Contained in the volume"Tribadi, sodomites, inverted and inverted, pederasts, feminins, hermaphrodite ... for a history of homosexuality, bisexuality and gender transgressions in Italy"By Umberto Grassi, Vincenzo Lagioia, Gian Paolo Romagnani, Edizioni Ets, Pisa, 2017.