Waldensian Review no 136 Summer 2020 136 | Page 2

Dear Friends and Supporters, From the Editor Thank you for your continuing support with prayers, feedback, enquires, purchases from our website and of course DONATIONS! Please keep looking at www.waldensian.org.uk for updates and new items. We need your support more than ever!!! We are also on Facebook: The Waldensian Church Missions. I hope the COVID19 has not affected any of you or your families and that the lockdown has not been too painful to bear. I have been following many online services, meditations and Zoom choirs from all over Italy and I am very impressed by how much the small Waldensian–Methodist Church has been able to produce. Radio Beckwith Evangelica has been excellent in helping with communications especially within the Waldensian Valleys, Pinerolo and Turin. I have listened to an incredible amount of Christian preaching from the Alps to Sicily to Rome, via Parma, Milan, Turin and even Basle. I have often tuned to the services of Ponte S. Angelo English Speaking Methodist Church and I have rarely missed a meditation by First open-air service post- Covid in Torre Pellice. Photo G. Benigno pastor Claudio Pasquet. As soon as it was possible open-air socially distanced services (with canopies in case of rain) have promptly started. Sadly, Synod is cancelled, though – postponed to Summer 2021. Congratulations to our Committee member Alastair Morris for being named Sheffield Businessperson of the year! Congratulations to our Patron, The Lord The Rev. Dr Leslie Griffiths, recently elected by his fellow peers, Labour Lords, to be part of the UK delegation to the Parliament of the Council of Europe, a body founded in 1949, well ahead of what became the EU. Its focus is on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. It comprises delegations from 47 nations across Europe and beyond. Leslie is now one of the permanent members of the Committee that deals with Migrations, Refugees and displaced people and hopefully he will make well known the work of the Waldensian Methodist Church in organising the ‘Humanitarian Corridors’ and the welcoming of migrants in places like Lampedusa! Cover: June 2015: Waldensian Church of Turin, from left: past. P. Ribet, O. Oudri and E. Bernardini, respectively Moderators of the Mensa and of Tavola valdese, Pope Francis and A. Trotta, then President of OPCEMI and now Moderator. Photo P. Romeo/Riforma