This is a question a lot of people ask. Italy's close connection to the Catholic Church leads us to believe that this country is not as critical of a mission field as other areas of the world. However, this is not the case. The spiritual climate of Italy is surprisingly bleak. Italy has one of the worst economies in the EU. Every time a new president is elected, the government completely changes. This has happened 62 times since World War II. Corruption is so rampant that in a study on the "happiest" countries in the world, Italy ranked last.
- Population of Italy: 57,592,000
- Percentage of Protestants: 0.82%
- Percentage of Atheists: 20%
- Only 5% of Catholics practice their faith.
- There are 616 official religions in Italy. Jehovah's Witnesses are as numerous as all Evangelicals put together.
- Number of missionaries: 464 (1:124,000)
- Number of full-time magicians: 100,000 (1:575)
- Only 10% of expatriate missionaries on average return for a second term.
- Out of 33,000 cities in Italy, 31,000 have absolutely no evangelical witness.
- In northern Italy, there are 4.4 million people and only 400 evangelical Christians. That's one believer for every 10,000 people.
- The University of Bologna, Alma Mater Studiorum, is the oldest university in Western Europe.
- Bologna has a population of 500,000. This includes the 100,000 students from the university.
- Before Crusade established a presence in Bologna 4 years ago, there had not been an organized Christian ministry on the campus in over 20 years.
- My team and I will be partnering with a few local evangelical churches in the city as well as TEAM (a church-planting organization) and Youth for Christ.
Check out another video of interviews with Italian students in Florence here.
