Renzo Bertalot 

Renzo Bertalot was born in Ivrea, on 21 June 1929. He earned a surveyor's diploma (geometra) through the Olivetti school. He then pursued theological studies at the Facoltà Valdese di Teologia in Rome between 1948 and 1952, followed by a year of study at Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States in 1953. He was ordained as a Waldensian pastor by the Waldensian Synod in 1953 and initially served pastoral charges in Turin and Chivasso.

From 1954 to 1961, Bertalot served the Italian Protestant and Waldensian diaspora in Montreal, Canada. During this period, he undertook advanced academic research at McGill University where he took the degrees Master of Sacred Theology (S.T.M., 1959) (with a dissertation on The Social Gospel and the Roman Catholic Modernism), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D., 1961/1962) (with a dissertation on Imago Christi: An investigation of the doctrine of Man according to the later writings of K. Barth and P. Tillich, for which he was supervised by J. McLelland). His pastoral and academic interactions with both Catholic and Protestant circles in pre-Vatican II Canada significantly formed his approach to ecumenical dialogue.

Upon returning to Italy, Bertalot served as pastor in Torre Pellice (1961–1962) and subsequently in Venice (1962–1967). In Venice, he emerged as a principal figure in Italian inter-confessional dialogue, collaborating closely with Roman Catholic priest Don Germano Pattaro and with Maria Vingiani, the founder of the Segretariato Attività Ecumeniche (SAE). In 1964, he authored the landmark volume Necessità del dialogo ecumenico (Editrice Morcelliana), which featured a preface by Don Pattaro. He participated in major ecumenical events, such as the SAE conference on Ecumenismo e Dialogo at the Mendola Alpine Pass in 1967. Bertalot served as national theological consultant to the SAE and, in 1973, became a founding member of its mixed theological working group alongside Pattaro and Monsignor Luigi Sartori.

From 1967 to 1989, Bertalot headed the Italian branch of the United Bible Societies (Alleanza Biblica Universale, ABU / Società Biblica Britannica e Forestiera). After initially overseeing a revision of Giovanni Luzzi's 1924 Protestant Riveduta translation, he initiated and coordinated a joint Catholic–Protestant translation of the Scriptures into contemporary Italian. The New Testament: was published in 1976 (following the individual release of the Epistle of James in 1975), and the complete Bible (Parola del Signore) was published in 1985 jointly by ABU and the Catholic publisher Elledici. The translation reached an estimated circulation of 13 to 14 million copies, and Bertalot presented the completed work to Pope Paul VI during a private audience.

In 1983, Bertalot co-founded the Società Biblica in Italia (SBI), an interconfessional non-profit association dedicated to spreading knowledge of the Scriptures. He served as its first secretary general / president (1983–1989)—with Catholic bishop Alberto Ablondi as vice-president—and was later named honorary president. In 1986, he was named an honorary member of the American Bible Society.

Bertalot taught across a broad range of Protestant and Catholic academic institutions in Italy, including at the Facoltà Valdese di Teologia (Rome), the Studio Teologico in Verona, the Istituto Teologico Saveriano in Parma, the Studentato delle Missioni in Bologna, and the Istituto di Scienze Religiose in Sorrento–Naples, the Universities of Sassari and Milan and, in the Catholic world, at the Pontificio Istituto Marianum (Rome) and the Istituto di Studi Ecumenici “San Bernardino” in Venice and Verona.

As a scholar, Bertalot served as an ordinary member of the Pontificia Accademia Mariologica Internazionale and was recognized for bringing a Protestant perspective to Mariological discussions. He edited the Italian translation of Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology for Editrice Claudiana and authored Paul Tillich: una teologia per il 20. secolo (1971), contributing approximately 150 books and articles over his career.

Renzo Bertalot died in Brescia on 19 March 2015 at the age of 85, with his funeral taking place at the Waldensian church in Brescia on 21 March 2015. His son, Valdo Bertalot, succeeded him as secretary general of the Società Biblica in Italia and presented a revised edition of the TILC Bible to Pope Francis in 2014.

Works:

• Bertalot, Renzo. The Social Gospel and the Roman Catholic Modernism. STM thesis. Montreal: McGill University, 1959. https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/x346d778s

• Bertalot, Renzo. Imago Christi: An Investigation of the Doctrine of Man according to the Later Writings of Paul Tillich (Systematic Theology II) and Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics III, 2). PhD diss. Montreal: McGill University, 1961/1962. Supervisor: J. McLelland. https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/

• Bertalot, Renzo. Ecumenismo protestante. Torino: P. Gribaudi, 1968.

• Bertalot, Renzo. Paul Tillich: una teologia per il 20. secolo. Minima 69. Roma: A.V.E., 1971. 117 pp.

• Bertalot, Renzo. Verso una morale della responsabilità: ricerche d’etica protestante. Studi e ricerche 12. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1972. 197 pp.

• Bertalot, Renzo, et al. Comunità locale ed Ecumenismo. Saggi 15. Roma: AVE, 1973. 390 pp. Acts of the 10th SAE lay formation session, Naples 1972.

• Bertalot, Renzo. “Rassegna delle principali cristologie contemporanee nelle loro implicazioni mariologiche. Il mondo protestante.” In Il Salvatore e la Vergine-Madre, (collective volume). Roma–Bologna, 1981, p. 114 (cited by Valentini).

• Bertalot, Renzo, ed. Paul Tillich, Teologia sistematica. Italian edition. Torino: Claudiana, from 1996. Vol. 1: Religione e rivelazione; L’essere e Dio; vol. 2: L’esistenza e il Cristo (220 pp., 2001, ISBN 88-7016-396-2); vol. 3: La vita e lo spirito. Series Sola Scriptura.

• Bertalot, Renzo. Ecco la serva del Signore. Una voce protestante. Scripta facultatis. Roma: Facoltà Teologica Marianum Editrice, 2002. 168 pp. ISBN 978-88-87016-60-4. Collected Marian essays from more than three decades of teaching at the Marianum.

• Bertalot, Renzo. Fasi della cultura europea d’Oltralpe. Collana Sussidi. Venezia: Istituto di Studi Ecumenici San Bernardino, 2002.

• Bertalot, Renzo. “La tenda di Abramo. L’ecumenismo e la riconciliazione.” Reprinted in Colloquia Mediterranea 9/2 (2019): 349–353 (originally a SAE summer-session address).

• Parola del Signore. Il Nuovo Testamento in lingua corrente (TILC). Torino/Leumann: Elledici / Alleanza Biblica Universale, 1976. Directed by Renzo Bertalot; consultants Jan de Waard (NT).

• Parola del Signore – La Bibbia in lingua corrente (TILC). Full Bible. Leumann–Roma: Elledici / Alleanza Biblica Universale, 1985. Directed by Renzo Bertalot; OT consultants Carlo Buzzetti and Jean-Claude Margot. Revised edition 2014 (presented to Pope Francis by Valdo Bertalot).

Selected essays in Studi Ecumenici (ISSN 0393-3687), 1983–2002 (as inventoried by Talarico):

• “L’interpretazione della Bibbia nel movimento ecumenico.” Studi Ecumenici 2/1 (1984): 9–26.

• “Unitatis Redintegratio: una valutazione protestante.” Studi Ecumenici 2/4 (1984): 587–596.

• “Violenza e regno di Dio.” Studi Ecumenici 11/1 (1993): 67–78.

• “Il matrimonio: prospettiva protestante.” Studi Ecumenici 11/3 (1993): 309–316.

• “Unità e diversità nello Spirito.” Studi Ecumenici 15/3 (1997): 351–357.

• “Abramo nel Nuovo Testamento.” Studi Ecumenici 16/2 (1998): 213–220.

Sources:

• Bertalot, Valdo, “Tradurre le Sacre Scritture. Renzo Bertalot e la Società Biblica in Italia.” Studi Ecumenici 36/1–2 (2018): 441–451.

• Bertalot. Valdo, “La traduzione interconfessionale della Bibbia in Italia.” Colloquia Mediterranea 4 (2014): 321–322.

• Bertalot, Valdo. “Soli Deo Gloria. In ricordo di Renzo Bertalot (1929–2015).” Veritas in caritate. Informazioni dall’Ecumenismo in Italia 8/3 (2015): 39–[ca. 41]. Centro Studi per l’Ecumenismo in Italia / Istituto di Studi Ecumenici San Bernardino, Venezia. 

• Burigana, Riccardo. Editorial frame to the same Veritas in caritate 8/3 (2015) issue, summarizing Bertalot’s passage from Montreal to the TILC.

• Burigana, Renato and Riccardo Burigana (eds.), special edition Colloquia Mediterranea 9/2 (2019). Firenze: Fondazione Giovanni Paolo II. http://www.pontecorboli.com/digital/Colloquia/COLLOQUIA_9_2019_2.pdf

• Chiesa Evangelica Valdese. “Renzo Bertalot: Un pioniere dell’ecumenismo.” 20 March 2015. https://chiesavaldese.org/notizie/page/151/

• Maselli, Domenico, and Carlo Ghidelli. La Società Biblica Britannica & Forestiera in Italia. Roma, 2004. Institutional history of the agency Bertalot directed from 1967 to 1989.

• Sgarbossa, Rino, 'Appendix: “Curriculum e pubblicazioni di Renzo Bertalot,”', in Al servizio della Parola: tradurre la Bibbia in dialogo con le chiese. Saggi in onore di Renzo Bertalot. Roma: Società Biblica Britannica & Forestiera, 2006. 

• “Una sola parola di Dio per tutti.” Notice of the 16 December 1976 Brescia lecture by Renzo Bertalot and Mons. Gianni Capra. Cooperativa Cattolico-democratica di Cultura. https://ccdc.it/documento/una-sola-parola-di-dio-per-tutti/

• United Bible Societies / Catholic Biblical Federation retrospective figures on TILC print runs (ca. 13 million copies, 1976–2017) in BDV digital, German ed. no. 105 (2016): 24.