Italy

Italy
Padua Regional Conference, 2009.
Location of Italy
National Assembly		Italy
Statistics:
Total Population
-	UN 2021	59,240,329
Bahá'í pop.
-	Bahá'í source
-	Non-Bahá'í source	4,192
History: Firsts
-	Pioneers	1898, Emogene Hoagg
-	Local Assembly	1948, Rome
-	National Assembly	1953, with Switzerland 1962, independent
Official Website		http://www.bahai.it/
Related media
Categories: Italy • People

The Italian Republic, also referred to as Italy, is a country in south-west Europe. Christianity is the predominant religion and Italian is the official language.

In recent history the region of Italy was united as the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. A Fascist regime came to power in 1922 and the nation became a republic in 1946 adopting its current constitution in 1948.

The Bahá’í Faith was first present in Italy in the 1890s however efforts to establish a community were disrupted by the Second World War. A Bahá’í community was firmly established after 1947 and continues to grow and participate in social and economic development activities to the present day.

History

The first Bahá’í to live in Italy was Emogene Hoagg, an American, who moved to Italy for a brief period at the end of 1898 to study music in Milan having declared in America a few months before. By the end of 1899 there were two Bahá’ís living in the country, Edoardo Buonsignori in Milan and Maria Litsska Forni in Erba. In the early 1900's many western Bahá’ís stopped in Italy while traveling to the Holy Land on pilgrimage and in 1900 Agnes Alexander, an American, declared in Italy after being introduced to the religion by traveling pilgrim Charlotte Dixon and her daughters. In 1911 American Bahá’í Horace Holley moved to Italy living in Florence and Siena and the same year Nellie French visited and taught the Faith in the country. Also in 1911 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá briefly visited Naples, Italy, while traveling to Western Europe accompanied by several Bahá’ís including His grandson Shoghi Effendi, however while in Naples Shoghi Effendi was diagnosed with trachoma and sent back to Beirut.

In 1918 Edith Burr pioneered to Florence where she actively taught at groups such as the Theosophists and the Philosophical Society in Florence and proclaimed the religion to prominent individuals. Emogene Hoagg returned to Italy in 1920 delivering talks in Naples and Rome, and in 1921 she taught in Florence, Milano, Torino, Bologna, and other smaller cities. In 1921 native Italian Teresa Gaspari Campani became a Bahá’í through Edith Burr, going on to produce some of the earliest translations of the Bahá’í writings into Italian, and the same year Loulie Mathews pioneered to Genova where she established a Bahá’í International Lending Library. Hoagg returned to Italy, living in Florence, from 1926 to 1927, and in 1928 Verena Venturini, who had declared in America, pioneered to Rome.

Efforts to establish a Bahá’í community in Italy ceased in the 1930's and 1940's due to the Second World War and Bahá’ís living in the country had no contact with the rest of the Bahá’í world, although in March 1940 Shoghi Effendi and his wife Rúḥíyyih Khánum briefly stayed in Genoa while they secured visas to enter the United Kingdom. Following the close of the war Shoghi Effendi called for the Bahá’í Faith to be firmly established in Italy. Ugo and Angeline Giachery pioneered to Rome in February, 1947, and were joined by Philip and June Marangella in April the same year with their arrival inspiring Teresa Gaspari Campani to become active in Florence and Verena Venturini in Rome. In March, 1947, Augusto Salvetti declared in Genoa, the first Italian to declare since the war, and the same month Lucia del Buono became the first person to declare in Rome. By October Giulio Jacoviello had become the first person to declare in Florence since the war and Italians continued to accept the Faith throughout the late 1940's.

In 1948 Marion Little pioneered to Florence, and William Sutherland Maxwell visited Italy to identify materials for the construction of the superstructure of the Shrine of the Báb with Ugo Giachery then assuming responsibility for arranging the delivery of construction materials to the Holy Land from Italy for several years. Also in 1948 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Rome was established, with Shoghi Effendi having a photograph of the inaugural Assembly framed and placed in the Mansion of Bahjí, and two more Local Spiritual Assemblies were established in 1951 in Naples and Florence. Also in 1951 Alessandro Bausani, Mario Fiorentini, and Ugo Giachery represented the Bahá’í Faith at the Fourth World Congress of the World Movement for World Federal Government held in Rome, and in October the same year Bausani married Elsa Scola in what was the first Bahá’í marriage in the country.

In 1952 Shoghi Effendi encouraged the Bahá’í community to focus on establishing Local Spiritual Assemblies in Italy announcing that a joint National Spiritual Assembly for Italy and Switzerland was to be established in 1953, and in March 1952 the first national Italian Bahá’í Conference was held in Rome and attended by seventy people including Hand of the Cause Zikrullah Khadem. In April 1953 the joint National Spiritual Assembly of Italy and Switzerland was established at a Convention held in Florence with delegates from the Italian communities of Rome, Naples, and Florence participating in the election of the body alongside delegates from three Swiss communities.

Italy was set the goal of having twelve Local Spiritual Assemblies by 1963 under the Ten Year Crusade which began in 1953. Other goals of the Ten Year Crusade included opening the Italian island regions of Sicily and Sardinia to the Bahá’í Faith with these being achieved when Emma Rice and the Bagley family pioneered to Sicily in October 1953, and Maria Ciocca pioneered to Sardinia the same month.

Dedication of the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds of Rome, 1955.

In 1954 several travel teachers visited Italy to support teaching efforts in Naples, Milan, Genoa, Florence, and Rome, and many pilgrims and pioneers visited the country en route to the Holy Land and their pioneer posts. In 1955 a building to serve as a Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds in Rome was secured and dedicated in November, with land for future construction of a Mashriqu’l-Adhkár being secured in Rome in January, 1956. Local Spiritual Assemblies were established in Milano and Genova in 1959 bringing the countries total to five Assemblies. The Italian Bahá’í community continued to find success in teaching as the 1960's began with Local Spiritual Assemblies being formed in 1960 for Venice, Perugia, and Turin, and Hand of the Cause ‘Alí-Akbar Furútan visited Italy in December that year. In 1961 the Local Spiritual Assemblies of Bari, Bologna, Padua, and Trieste were formed, and during the year a team of Persian university students visited two hundred villages in central Italy to travel teach.

In 1962 Italy and Switzerland established independent National Spiritual Assemblies, and teaching work was immediately accelerated with several teaching conferences to introduce the public to the Faith were held across the country, and a youth meeting being held in Padua which was the largest Bahá’í youth meeting ever held in Italy at the time. As of 1964 there were fifteen Local Spiritual Assemblies on mainland Italy and one on Sicily and the community was set the goal of having twenty-four Assemblies in total by 1973 by the newly formed Universal House of Justice. In 1966 the National Spiritual Assembly of Italy was formally incorporated with the authorities, and in 1968 a major international Bahá’í teaching conference dubbed an Oceanic Conference was held in Palermo which also served to commemorate the centenary of Bahá’u’lláh crossing the Mediterranean Sea on His exile.

In 1972 an international European Bahá’í Youth Conference was held in Padova. By 1973 mainland Italy had twenty-six Local Spiritual Assemblies, an additional three on Sicily, one on Capri, and one on Sardinia meaning the country had surpassed its goal set by the Universal House of Justice. In the early 1970's the community also secured official recognition of Bahá’í marriage. The Italian community began holding annual National Teaching Institutes in the early 1970's and in 1975 it held two Institutes, for northern and southern Italy, for the first time. During the mid 1970's Italy reached thirty Local Spiritual Assemblies, secured a Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds in Perugia, the National Assembly established the magazine Opinioni Bahá’í, and the Faith achieved greater media coverage.

In the 1980's Assemblies continued to be formed in Italy, and its existing Local Spiritual Assemblies achieved greater functionality and independence with the National Spiritual Assembly dissolving a Committee for the Assistance of Local Assemblies due to the body no longer being required. In the 1990's a series of discussions of Bahá’í teachings were broadcast on Italian television, and in 1995 Sicily established its own independent National Spiritual Assembly. In 2003 a course on Bahá’í inspired ethics and economics was established at the University of Bari, and in 2004 the Bahá’í inspired organization Vision Association, dedicated to developing womens capabilities, held its first International European Conference in Acuto.

In 2009 a major Bahá’í regional conference was held in Padua which gathered 1,700 people who consulted on Bahá’í activities and adopting a culture of learning, and in 2013 a major international youth conference was held in Verona.

In 2017 the Palladio Museum in Vicenza hosted an exhibition organized by Margraf, the Italian company which had produced marble fixtures for several notable Bahá’í buildings in the Holy Land and abroad, which included several Bahá’í buildings. In 2019 the Italian Bahá’í community sent a letter to the President of Italy expressing appreciation for a talk in which the President emphasized the importance of unity and received a reply expressing gratitude. In 2023 the Bahá’í community of Italy co-organized a discussion forum on the role of media in fostering social harmony in Rome, and in 2025 the Italian Bahá’í Office of External Affairs launched the podcast Intessere'.