Common threads:

Mennonites in Dialogue with the

Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome

by Marilyn Stahl and Dirk Giseburt

In early May, several Mennonites from the United States paused in the 16^th century Church of Sant’Egidio in Rome. In the 1970s, after many years as an adjunct to a Carmelite convent, the church became the gathering place of the new Community of Sant’Egidio, a loosely organized group of young people who had come together in prayer and in dedication to service to the poor. With simple, white walls, the church is in the form of a cross. The altar on the left side is piled with Bibles in all the languages of countries where the Community has active membership. The altar on the right is decorated with a multitude of crosses made by craftspersons in many countries. The altar in front bears a very old Russian icon of Christ that had been found at the church.

“We pray here, between Holy Scripture and the poor, facing Jesus,” explained Claudio Betti, a Sant’Egidio member. When Sant’Egidio was founded in 1968, this twin devotion to the Bible and the poor had set the Community apart in Rome. But today, with 40,000 members worldwide, the Community has the support of Church leaders and has become a widely respected advocate both for the poor and for peace.

The tour continued: In the former convent dining room, Sant’Egidio members once acted as mediators between the factions in a civil war in Mozambique that had taken several hundred thousand lives. The negotiations lasted over two years but finally resulted in a peace agreement, signed in the dining room in 1992. The Community has several times been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as a result.

Sant’Egidio had invited American Mennonites to visit their community in Rome after making contact through the Mennonite-Catholic Bridgefolk conversations in the U.S. Andrea Bartoli, who now teaches conflict resolution at Columbia University in New York, and Claudio Betti, who is a senior member of the Community in Rome, initiated the visit.

Attending from the U.S. were Marlene and Stanley Kropf of Elkhart, Indiana, Marilyn Stahl and Dirk Giseburt of Seattle, and Lois and Ivan Kauffman of Washington, D.C. Weldon Nisly, pastor of Seattle Mennonite Church, had intended to join the delegation but was unable to do so on account of injuries suffered in Iraq while returning from a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation to Baghdad during the war. Marlene, Weldon, and Ivan are members of the Bridgefolk steering committee.

The Sant’Egidio Community describes their life as resting on three “pillars” – prayer, friendship, and service to the poor. The Mennonite delegation was shown numerous examples of the loving friendship of the Community. One day the group visited the soup kitchen (called La Mensa) operated by Sant’Egidio for the poor and homeless. Up to 1,000 persons are served 5 nights each week by an all-volunteer team. (There are no paid staff in Sant’Egidio – all members have secular day jobs or are students.) The guests are served at tables rather than in a cafeteria line, so as to emphasize the dignity of all persons there.

Another day, the Mennonite group visited a Gypsy camp on the outskirts of Rome (down the Appian Way past the catacombs and the church of Quo Vadis). By reaching out to Gypsies voluntarily and independent of government social service programs, Sant’Egidio members have gained credibility and established warm relationships and are now able to serve as mediators between Gypsies and various sources of discrimination. On the return from the Gypsy camp, one of the Sant’Egidio members, Matteo Bruni, reflected on the personal impact of his friendship with this group: “For some mysterious reason, the more you love the poor the more you love peace.”

On May 1, an Italian national holiday, the tradition is to go out for a picnic. The Sant’Egidio version of the picnic is to host the poor and homeless in their community for a meal in the open air, followed by prizes and a soccer match. The Mennonite group also attended the picnic, held this year at the Irish College in Rome (a scholarly residence originally founded as a refuge for Irish priests when Cromwell’s Puritan army invaded Ireland and forbade Catholic practices). The picnic menu included rice with mixed vegetables, sausages, tuna loaf, spinach frittata, roasted potatoes and french fries, and the traditional May Day treat – roasted fava beans with Romano (sheep’s) cheese.

Each evening, Sant’Egidio holds a 30-minute prayer service at 8:30 p.m. in three churches in Rome (mass is held Saturday evening). The largest is held at the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, believed to be built on the site of one of the oldest churches in Rome, dating back to the early Christians in the era of persecution. The prayers are modeled to a degree on the monastic hours and are almost entirely sung, also adapting some Orthodox music and prayer traditions.

Each evening after prayers, in keeping with the Italian lifestyle, the Americans went out to supper with Sant’Egidio members – Italians as well as several Americans from the Community group in Boston who were studying in Rome this spring. These meals were the setting for lively, informal exchanges – “getting-to-know-you” and building friendships in a most blessed way.

At the concluding meeting, Claudio Betti described the visit as a journey through the treasures of the Community. Although unstructured and informal, he said, the Community is profoundly part of the Catholic Church, giving it richness and flesh. Sant’Egidio is and wants to be a bridge to other faith traditions, and a welcoming and friendly place in the Catholic Church, because in the Community’s view unity among Christians is a matter of life and death for our world today. Claudio expressed the Community’s desire to deepen the relationship with Mennonites, because, through the work of the Spirit, we already meet on grounds of care, common interests, and love.

Stan and Marlene Kropf presented Sant-Egidio with an official blessing and greeting from their local church, the Belmont Mennonite Church in Elkhart. Marlene, who is serving as Director of Mennonite Church USA’s Office of Congregational Life, also expressed the support and continuing interest of the Church’s Executive Board regarding the dialogue with Sant’Egidio. She and others in the Mennonite group identified numerous Mennonite echoes in the practices of Sant’Egidio – service, sense of community and belonging, prayer in music, and the peace witness.

Also at this time, Marilyn Stahl related to the Community members the story of the CPT presence in Baghdad, Weldon Nisly’s experiences in the wartime delegation, and the support of Seattle Mennonite Church and of the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board for this peace witness. She expressed the desire of the Seattle Mennonite Church to become a eucharistic community of peace. The members of Sant’Egidio were clearly moved, not least because they, too, were sending Claudio Betti to Baghdad in the days that followed. He was to be looking into ways to employ contributions gathered from Sant’Egidio groups all over the world for relief and reconstruction in Iraq.

The meeting concluded with invitations to Claudio and other members of the Community to visit Mennonite church communities in the United States. The Mennonites then offered a gesture of thanks to the Sant’Egidio members by singing a hymn – “Will you let me be your servant.” The hymn captured beautifully the two groups’ sense of their common ground – a capstone expression of what had been made plain in their time together each day.

(For more information about the Community of Sant’Egidio, see its website www.santegidio.org/en/.

“Sant’Egidio” is pronounced in Italian as “sahnt-eh-JEE-dee-o”.)