gatherings as the only Protestant minister in the whole area , he was also asked unbelievable questions such as : ‘ How can Protestants be Christians if they don ’ t believe in the Pope ?’.
After another very intensive fascinating six years they felt it was time to move on . Richard is now Superintendent of Blackheath and Crystal Palace and , after his third appointment in this country since 2004 , he feels that the Italian experience still has a great influence in his ministry and his approach to congregations of various and sometimes contrasting cultures .
He keeps close contacts with Italy , attending celebrations such as the recent centenary of Vicenza church , going back to Rome , attending Synod in Torre Pellice and being a member of the Committee of the WCM . They also have a small holiday flat in Trentino .
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‘ I was a stranger , and you welcomed me ’: My surprising sabbatical in Italy
When I arrived in Rome on New Year ’ s Day 2020 , I was looking forward to the sabbatical of a lifetime . It was , of course — but not in the way that I had planned .
My original intention was to spend two months in Rome studying Italian , and then four months travelling around Italy doing interviews for a book called Welcoming the Stranger . Working with friends from Mediterranean Hope , I hoped to highlight the stories of several refugees . I envisioned the book as something that would be useful for Christians ( and others ) who need help discovering and understanding what the Bible has to say about welcoming the stranger ( Deuteronomy 10:19 ).
It was a good plan , but it had no room for a pandemic . To be more precise , the pandemic had no room for my plan . By late February it was becoming ever more obvious that COVID-19 was going to get in the way of everyone ’ s plans — often in deadly ways .
Thus began a new and unexpected chapter of my sabbatical . Travelling around Italy was clearly out of the question in light of the strict lockdowns imposed by the Italian government to combat the spread of the virus . While I briefly considered returning to the US in mid-March , I still held on to the hope that I might be able to salvage some of my sabbatical plans when the lockdown lifted . So , at the gracious invitation of Archbishop Ian Ernest and his wife Kamla at the Anglican Centre , I settled into my little apartment in the heart of historic Rome to ride out the storm .
The next two months were both awful and wonderful . In the ‘ awful ’ category was the constant worry about friends and family in the States , where there was no consistent leadership to contain the virus . In April I received the news that two close friends in New York had died — putting faces on the statistics