182 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT Lack of communion is the scandal BF speaks about the early days of the community as well, before the current practice of Eucharistic hospitality from the side of the Roman Catholic Church was established. He recalls a short period in which no Catholic priest was present in Bose. A Waldensian pastor in the community (one of the first monastics to join Brother Enzo’s initiative) would preside over the Eucharistic liturgy. BF says the community informed the authorities of both churches involved without receiving any (negative) response. When they continued on this path, a guest wrote about it to a Turin newspaper, which stirred controversy. Shortly after, the Roman Catholic bishop asked the community to cease this practice. Interestingly, BF uses the word ‘scandal’ only once during this narrative. However, he does not use it refer to the controversy or the practice of Eucharistic sharing; rather he uses it to refer to the state of division, which caused the community great suffering – especially while celebrating the Eucharist. In the period preceding this short episode of Eucharistic hospitality in the Waldensian tradition, the community had known a practice of separation: the non-Catholics would celebrate a liturgy presided by the Waldensian pastor, while the Catholics joined the Roman Catholic parish in the village. Explaining the motivation behind the decision to initiate a practice of sharing the Eucharist within the community, BF says: At the beginning, when I arrived, the practice was that normally, there was no uh, sharing of the Eucharist. Uh… but at a moment~ but we discussed every, uh… regularly, this absurdity. And we tried to find some solution. At a moment, I was just a novice, so, I know things a little bit from outside, I was not involved directly, but they wrote to the… authority of the two churches, so, the Waldensians, where Daniel was attached as pastor in Italy, because there are no reformed fromNeuchâtel in Italy, and to the um…Cardinal Pellegrino in Turin, who was the bishop in Turin, responsible for our community, because the local bishop didn’t agree at all, so, he knew, and so said, I will be the guarantee for the Roman Catholic part. And they wrote, saying that, since the beginning they had this problem, that we wish to remain faithful to our churches, in the same time, we cannot bare longer this, uh, scandal.423 423 BF-1,10a.
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