Bible connection

Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faithfulness.–– Habakkuk 2:4

All about Luigi (Louis) Franscescon (1866-1964)

Luigi Francescon was born in an Italian farming village named Cavasso Nuovo, not far from what is now the Slovenian border. His family faced hard times. Their poverty was compounded by the need to pay tribute to the village overlord. Though only educated to the sixth grade, Francescon overcame his poverty by perfecting his craft as a mosaicist. He then joined the military and earned enough to emigrate to the United States.

He arrived in Chicago on March 3, 1890. There he heard the preaching of Michele Nardi the Italian immigrant evangelist and left Catholicism for interdenominational Protestant faith. Together with Waldensians Teofilo Gay and Filippo Grill, also connected with Nardi, Francescon helped found the First Italian Presbyterian Church of Chicago. He soon left the Presbyterians, however, because infant baptism did not make sense to him. The evangelist, Giuseppe Beretta, led him to embrace adult baptism by immersion and rebaptized him. A new church formed under Beretta’s leadership, meeting in homes, including Francescon’s.

On August 25, 1907, during a visit to William H. Durham’s North Avenue Mission, only blocks away from his home, Francescon was baptized in the Spirit. Durham’s mission had become the center for a revival influenced by the outpouring at Azusa Street in Los Angles. Durham had been a skeptic until he visited Azusa Street and spoke in tongues.

With fellow Pentecostal pioneer Pietro Ottolini, Francescon stood for several years at the helm of an awakening at the Italian Grand Avenue Mission, which later took the name the Assemblea Cristiana (Christian Assembly). Francescon helped steer the church through several years of doctrinal turbulence (over issues such as the Sabbath), while continuing to stand firmly against further attempts to “organize” the work. However, when the future of the Italian American Pentecostal movement depended on it, he relented to the demand to structure the church along doctrinal and missional lines. He was thus among the chief founders and original overseers of the Christian Church of North America, the flagship denomination of the movement — later the CCUS or Christian Congregation in the United States. There is a congregation in Philadelphia at 1900 Ripley in Rhawnhurst.

Francescon also founded congregations in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, often leaving his wife and six children in the care of the church.

Alongside his pioneering work on the North American front, Francescon is also counted among the most prominent of the founders of Pentecostal work in South America.  Accompanied by Giacomo Lombardi and Lucia Menna from the Chicago Mission, in late 1909 Francescon embarked on a missionary trip to family and friends in Argentina. His own report, and the historical memory of the churches he founded, attest to his evangelism being accompanied by healings and various miracles. In the city of San Cayetano, Francescon was arrested and stood trial. Upon his release, he was forbidden to ever preach there again.

Francescon’s life-defining work still lay ahead. Among the Italian diaspora in Brazil he founded the Congregação Cristã no Brasil (Portuguese for Christian Congregation in Brazil). This church became the mother of a global denomination. In March of 1910 he arrived in São Paulo. One of his first contacts there was Vincenzo Pievani, an atheist. Pievani brought him to his home in San Antonio da Platina where Francescon conducted a fruitful outreach among the Roman Catholic population. His success attracted the attention of a local priest. The priest reportedly plotted to have Francescon killed, sparking Francescon’s escape and return to São Paulo. There he witnessed to a number of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Roman Catholics, who left their parishes and joined the fledgling Pentecostal movement. He delivered a homily in Italian at a Presbyterian church in the Italian barrio known as the Brás, urging the congregation to seek the baptism in the Spirit. The eldership fervidly disapproved of both the manner and language Francescon used to deliver the sermon. Ordered to leave the congregation, Francescon carried a large number away with him and founded an independent congregation. The church became the linchpin for the Congregação Cristã, which remains to this day one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in Brazil.

In 1911, William Durham reported that Francescon had left for Italy to evangelize his home region. “It was never our privilege to meet a more blessed and powerful man of God”, he wrote. “He is certainly doing, as it were, the work of an Apostle”.

Over his lifetime, Francescon made nine trips from his home church in Chicago to Brazil. Although he made no monetary demands, the Congregação Cristã funded his last two trips. Even until his death in 1964, at 96, and completely blind, Francescon continued to send letters of encouragement to the Pentecostal work he founded in Brazil.

More

Nice Wikipedia page.

Explorations in Italian Protestantism has been much referenced above. Here is Francescon’s page.

At the CCUS website, they have included their founder’s testimony.

Are you familiar with Family Search? Here is Luigi’s page.

This is in Portuguese, but the pictures give some nice background:

What do we do with this?

The Pentecostal movement has made a huge impact on Brazil and all of South America.  It felt wild to the Presbyterians Francescon left behind. Ironically, the denomination he founded reportedly lost more than 200,000 adherents leading into the 21st century due to their inability to adapt to the times. Their prophecy was overcome by the order Francescon resisted. It makes us think how we can be stuck in our ways and irrelevant, even though what got our churches started was also passion and selfless work.

In the mid-20th century, 90% of Brazilians identified as Catholics.  Recent estimates suggest the percentage is closer to 50%. The Wikipedia page outlines the expansion.  If you are an American, you might not be aware of  anything on that page. But you might run into one of the Brazilian missionaries called to serve in your godless backyard.  The Family Church Brazil has been in Frankford for over 5 years.  What do you think about living in a mission field?