Roberto Bracco

Born in Rome on 27 May 1915, in the same month in which Italy entered World War I on the side of the Allies, Roberto Bracco was raised in some of the most tumultuous times of his country's history. He would later describe his family as 'morally pure but with a weak religious spirit'. [Bracco, 'Personal Testimony'] One of many children, left to largely look after themselves, the single greatest religious influence in his life was that of his grandmother. When his mother died in 1923, the family faced significant economic hardship, such that at the age of 11, he was sent to work in a noted stationer/ bookseller near their home, and later worked at a leading antiquarian bookshop (Liberma). It was here, rather than school, that he (an inquisitive and intelligent young man) read omnivorously, spoke with people of broad intellectual achievements, and acquired a level of culture and expression unusual for many from his social context. This would play a critical role in his elevation to ecclesial leadership later in life. As a teenager, however, he felt the lack of guidance and spiritual care from others, and unequal to the task of struggling with the regnant nihilism and atheism of the time. The ecclecticism and intelligence of a close friend led Roberto astray. '[M]i conquistò con la sua teoria... io ripudiai completamente la religione.' [He defeated me with his theory [and] I completely repudiated all religion.] With the death of his grandmother, he was sent to live outside his immediate family. In later life, he would put a great emphasis on the guidance and spiritual care of others as a central plank in his ministry.

At the age of 17, however, Bracco was suddenly gripped with an incredible fear of death, an almost physical terror, at the impermanence and nothingness of life. It was a challenge which struck him as profoundly spiritual, and for which he had no resources. He returned to the periodic preaching in his grandmother's tradition, but found no solace there. The solution came instead through a 'simple' Christian sister who was hired to assist his father's second wife with their large family. She had been converted to pentecostalism by contacts with some of the earliest women to join that movement. He puzzled at her revivalistic language, rich with phrases such as 'the marriage of the Lamb in heaven'. What he drew from this, however, was that God was a living God, who would respond to those who called on Him. It was "a truly decisive and convincing" meeting precisely because it wasn't phrased in terms of intellectual argument. It was, rather, the ability to talk about Christ as real, as living, as someone who he alone could seek but who would respond if he did.

Bracco, however, was sharing a bedroom with two of his brothers, and he didn't have the courage to pray in front of them. One night ('in the darkness of the night') while they were asleep, he got out of bed and prayed. He felt that God had responded in his soul, and began to seek out the community to which this 'simple sister' had belonged. There in 1933, in a tiny, underground 'cantina' he met people who lived their religion. Immediately, he ceased being haunted by his ontological crisis, in which he described seeing visions of people as walking skeletons. Instead, he came into contact with a living community of living people. “That night I had felt only this joy, this peace, this imperious interior impulse to seek out its people, and I found the Lord.” Another account notes that 'It was a simple phrase of a believer which stamped itself upon his mind. “God will respond, simply call to him in your room, asking to manifest himself in your life and you will meet him personally.' He did so, and to the shock and then opposition from his family, shortly afterwards he asked to be baptized.

Bracco entered the pentecostal church at a particularly intense time--after the Concordat between the Fascist regime and the Catholic Church, and during a time when minorities across Italy were increasingly being squeezed to the margins in a process which would culminate in the Circolare Buffarini Guidi and the racial laws. Pentecostals met these challenges with frequent (often nightly) prayer meetings, during which Bracco sought the Holy Spirit. He would later remember Francesco Testa preaching passionately about his desire for the Baptism in the Spirit, how in the six months that he had sought the baptism, ‘there was not a waking minute in which I did not think did not desire or did not pray for the baptism in the Spirit.’ Visions of Christ’s return were common among the believers, resulting in a personal strength from the ‘expectation of glory’. Even when the Fascist persecutions began, it was almost impossible to induce people to stop meeting for prayer – “there was no power capable of inducing these brothers and sisters to leave the place where there was the glory of the Lord.” Instead, prayer meetings moved to places like the Fosse Ardeatine, the caves along via Tiburtina, or out into the country. (It later became impossible to use these Roman caves, after German forces in March 1944 perpetrated a mass execution on the site in retaliation for partisan harassment). Not surprisingly, the Pentecostal spirituality which emerges from this period has much in common with early Christian catacombs spirituality – while held in private, it did not hold with private Christianity, and flowed out into testimony and public confession.

Fascist persecution set in in earnest in 1935, when the 19 year old Bracco had been converted only 2 years. “I found myself in the middle of the persecution along with many others, but … we were inclined to confront almost anything because of the fire of the Spirit, the warmth of the love of the Lord, were sufficient for us.” On 15 March 1935, the church on Via Adige was closed, and the pastor, Ettore Strappaveccia, banned from ministry and repatriated. The immediate result was that, now that the community could no longer meet in large numbers, more ministers and leaders were required to run the smaller groups which were meeting from house to house. ‘We had meetings in hollows, in caves, in the country, in forests, on the banks of rivers, in houses -- we came to know the most diverse types of rooms, if you want to speak of these places as rooms.’ Bracco felt ‘pushed’ to step forward as one of the three leaders in a Roman community which now reorganized itself into ‘cells’ in ways reminiscent of other oppressed communities. His internal sense of vocation met an external, objective call of God. Then two of the leaders were arrested, and forcibly repatriated under the system of “il foglio di via obbligatorio” (internal exile, or ‘obligatory travel’). Suddenly, at the age of 21, “I found myself alone having to take on the responsibility of the entire church”. He did not escape, but was himself brought before a police tribunal for “l’ammonizione” (admonition), which involved virtual house arrest and special surveillance. Regardless, ‘all the time I was under “admonition” I transgressed its terms every day, because every day I continued my activity, I met with the brothers, presided over meetings, and held services, and the Lord watched over me.’

This experience profoundly affected his spirituality, as it would for his entire generation: ‘because the call was honoured [by Christ], on my part it required of me an authentic consecration… not only must I not no longer think of those things which I had left behind’ (such as his love for sport, the cinema, theatres etc) but ‘I must dedicate entirely my self, my thoughts, my life, for that work which had been given to me, a work which must be completed for the Lord.’ This was not religion as a form of leisure activity, but spirituality which became imbued with a sense of seriousness contingent upon not being sure that every time they left the house or run a religious service that they would not be arrested as a result. Bracco himself would be arrested some 17 times. On one of those occasions, he spent 16 days in the ‘Regina Coeli’, on another 3 months in the Civita Castellana. On those occasions, gaol cells became church meeting rooms. Typically, oppression was a time which threw into relief the miraculous: Bracco himself saw the formation of character, the growth of a genuine love within a community which had many of its members in jail for extended periods of time, dead or dragged away through internal exile or military conscription. He gained the reputation with the police of being “irriducibile pentecostiere”. Despite this, ‘there was not a family which was in need, not a brother who was not assisted, not a problem which was not met and resolved, precisely because of the love which was inflamed by the persecution… The persecution operated in our favour, giving us new visions of the power of the grace of God.’

Bracco later wrote about these experiences in his book Persecuzioni in Italia. At Frascati, he remembered, there were so many being tried under the conditions of the Circ. Buffarini Guidi (some 72) that proceedings had to be moved out of the courthouse into the great Hall of the town council. ‘For us it was a magnificent occasion, an evangelistic opportunity: we testified openly to the grace of God and we closed the mouths of many.’ Bracco himself was condemned to 2 months in gaol with a 1500 lire fine-- essentially three months, given that they were not inclined to pay the fine. The conviction was overturned on appeal. Under ‘burdens and battle’, and the opposition of his family, never for an ‘instant did I think to leave the Lord.’ The opposition was not merely religious in nature: it was his family, it should be remembered, who had to put up with the repeated police raids designed to enforce the terms of Bracco’s ‘admonition’. He could not count, he later wrote, how many times he heard the sentiment that ‘Why Bracco, you can pray, it's enough for you to pray in your own home, the Lord will hear you, and so is not necessary for you to put yourself in the midst of these fanatics and to risk all that you are risking.’ But this faith was not a private faith. Persistence would bring his family around to seeing his faith from a different point of view. In the meantime, despite his youth, Bracco’s central position as leader of the community in Rome projected him onto a regional stage as trouble shooter and problem solver among the underground churches.

Then, in 1943, everything changed. On the personal front, Bracco married Anna Stella. On the public front, Rome was in turmoil as the King (Vittorio Emmanuele III) first sacked and imprisoned Mussolini, elevating the WWI hero Badoglio in his place, and then withdrew from the War in favour of an Armistice with the Allies. His flight to Brindisi left Rome in the hands of the German occupying forces. While the city was spared much of the bombing which would decimate the northern industrial cities, control over minority groups was tighter than ever until, on 4 June 1944, the American Fifth Army broke through and captured Rome from retreating German forces. Two days later, Allied forces landed in Normandy. As the War shifted north, Bracco was elected pastor of the reunited Church in Rome. He set about helping gain the release of Roman leaders, such as Arcangeli, who were in prison, and the return of those who had been sent into exile. Despite the Allied government of occupation, and later the ratification of a secular national constitution for Italy, provisions such as the Circolare Buffarini-Guidi were not repealed until 16 April 1955, providing a pretext for continuing local harrassment by authorities.

In the face of this Bracco worked with U. N. Gorietti to, first, restore connection between the churches, and to direct what overseas aid could be gained towards the starving communities in the south. In 1946, with the financial and personal support of pentecostal churches in Zurich and Winterthur, he founded the journal, Risveglio Pentecostale, which he would (at first from his home at Viale Eritrea 34, near the Parco Virgiliano) edit until 1949, and for which he would continue to write for many years. In 1947, the first national convention of Italian pentecostal churches was held in Naples, in part to accept the offer of affiliation with the American Assemblies of God, and so to receive legal recognition by the new Italian state. The Assemblee di Dio in Italia (ADI) was formed, with Umberto N. Gorietti as President, and Bracco as Secretary. Bracco assisted in the writing of the ADI Statute, which became the basis of its relationship with the State, and formed part of the delegation which represented the Churches in the consequent negotiations. (The signatories on the "Agreement for Association between the General Council of the Assemblies of God with Headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, U.S.A. and the Assemblies of God of Italy with Headquarters in Rome, Italy" (1947) were E. S. Williams, J. R Flower, N. Perkin, U. N. Gorietti, R. Bracco, P. A. di Domentio). He was reelected national Secretary of the ADI at the 1948 convention held in Catania [ADI 1948, 13], and represented the ADI at the 3rd Pentecostal World Conference in Paris in 1949.

Bracco was always concerned to lift the educational level of the Church. In 1952, he visited the USA 'with the hearty approval of our Foreign Missions Department', connecting with Phil D'Angelo's church, Broadway Temple, in New Jersey, and touring other churches in the AGUSA's Italian District to raise support for the Bible School in Italy. (PE 22.6.1952, p. 9) At the same time, he was ever a revivalist, and often spoke of the pentecostal movement in Italy as 'Il Risveglio'. In 1954, he hosted William Branham during a series of services in Rome. Bracco closed the campaign with words from the Gospel of Luke: “And everyone was astonished and glorified God, being full of fear, and saying, today we have seen strange things.”

At the 1955 Catania convention of the ADI, Bracco was nominated Director of the projected denominational training institute in Rome, a post he had effectively already held from its foundation in 1954 in a few rooms provided by his church, and which he would hold until 1965. It was a recognition of his literary leadership, his core role in the church, and the fact that (with Anthony Piraino and Nello Gorietti) he had been instrumental in raising much of the funding from North American churches. He would travel widely with Anthony Piraino during his evangelistic campaigns throughout Italy, and preach in 1959 in Matera with the "Buona Novella" campaign that saw many converted.

In 1960, after some division in his church, Bracco was returned as pastor by only 87 per cent of the vote (the other 13 per cent of the vote went to his assistant pastor, Luigi Arcangeli). The principled Bracco felt that he could not minister to such a divided congregation, and resigned to divide his time between evangelism and teaching at the Bible School. Six months later, he commenced services at the Istituto Biblico Italiano's via Prenestina site (no. 639), which was in process of expansion on the basis of American funding. (A new five story building for 100 students was dedicated in 1961 by T. F. Zimmerman and J. Philip Hogan from the USA. At the time, the Institute was teaching 35 students). As they outgrew the premises, a site was purchased on Via Anacapri - here too there was conflict with the ADI, as the site was purchased in the name of the congregation, and not held centrally by the denomination. It was made clear to Bracco that his services at Via Prenestina could not continue. This was a significant problem for the young congregation, as local authorities continued to effectively restrict evangelical applications for land or development. It was not until 1962 that the new facilities were available for use. At the same time, the church began plans for a retirement home, so they could care for all their community. The result was Casa Alloggio per Anziani Bethel.

For his part, the restorationist Bracco felt little attachment to 'human institutions', and though remaining connected to the ADI community, his main focus was pastoral and educational. It was not until 1977 that he would once again accept a leading position on ADI's Consiglio Generale, and as a teacher in the Bible School. In 1980, Bracco again found himself in disagreement with the ADI's leadership, this time over the case of the dismissal of the pugliese pastor, Giovanni Ferri, on moral grounds that Bracco thought were insufficiently proven. His concerns about the debilitating effects of state recognition upon what some saw as an increasingly legalistic ADI were given expression in his last work, La verita vi fa liberi (The Truth will set You Free). Historically, he suggested, organization of the church had led to regimentation and compromise which had 'suffocated the fire of the Spirit'. Though himself an author of the Statute on which the ADI's pact with the State rested, it was the very nature of a Statute (he now thought) to formalise power, and consolidate it in the hands of men rather than in the Word of God. The ADI itself was in no doubt that this extreme congregationalism was an 'open challenge' to the denomination by a leader of enormous personal prestige. Bracco was thus struck from the Ministers Roll of the ADI for fractiousness. (Cristiani Oggi, 1-15 Feb. 1996, pp. 2-3) There would be consequences for the action - the ADI did not take the opportunity to deal with the rising tide of dissatisfaction over hierarchy, and the discontent among Churches in Puglia did not go away. His warnings played out later in alienating examples of centralized use of the purse in the ADI.

Bracco remained pastoral to the end, dying while visiting the Church's retirement home on 25 July 1983. Many remembered his hospitality there, and in his home. Others remembered his simplicity, his openness to being with people, his friendly warmth, which wrapped around a sharp mind, and (for someone who did not progress beyond fifth class in primary school) a remarkable command of literature and contemporary affairs. He was survived by his children, including Lucio Bracco, who maintains his father's literary and sermonic tradition on the internet, and by the continuing legacy of his work, supported by the Churches that he planted.

Mark Hutchinson

Sources:

ADI "Relazione del Convegno Nazionale tenutosi a Catania, 27-29 Agosto 1948", Roma: ADI, 1948.

Bracco, Roberto, 'Personal Testimony'.

Bracco, Roberto, Il Risveglio Pentecostale in Italia, 1956.

Cristiani Oggi (various editions)