Sebastiano Trapani

Born in Ciminna (Palermo) in 1830, Sebastiano Trapani entered the Dominican Order, from 1858 holding the position of rector of the convent of Castrogiovanni (Enna). Here he was an appreciated Lenten scholar, and among those he influenced was Angelo Deodato, who later became a colporteur.

In 1860 Trapani met Garibaldi, who was passing through his city to enlist volunteers. In 1863, after delivering a sermon against the temporal power of the Pope which provoked a reaction from his ecclesiastical superiors, he decided to leave the convent and to devote himself to teaching as a private tutor to wealthy Palermitan families.

When Giorgio Appia drew together the first meeting of in a hotel in Palermo, Trapani became one of the first adherents of the Waldensian Church of Palermo. His parents disinherited him. Hired by the Evangelization Committee in 1866, Trapani directed the Waldensian school in Palazzo Sambuca in Palermo until 1871. While in Palermo, he married Dorotea Cardinali (Palermo 1842 – Trabia 1884), with whom he had five children: Antonino, Giovanni Battista, Maria, Serafina and Emmelina. Maria, who trained and taught as a teacher in her father's school in Palermo, migrated to the USA and in 1904 married Francesco Di Giacomo [q.v.].

Transferred as a teacher-evangelist to Trabia, he collaborated with the pastor John Simpson Kay, preaching and directing a Waldensian elementary school of around fifty pupils. He was notably successful despite a harsh clerical reaction, which led to episodes of intolerance culminating in a nocturnal attack on his home in 1884. His work as teacher and manager of the small community of Trabia, much reduced due to emigration to America, continued until he became emeritus in 1902.

In 1903 he decided to emigrate to the United States where his brother and two daughters already lived in New York, but two years later he returned to Trabia. Struck by paralysis he was transferred to a civil hospital, he died in Palermo on 6 October 1906.

Sources:

Sappa, Micael, 'Sebastiano Trapani', Dizionario Biografico dei Protestanti in Italia, https://www.studivaldesi.org/dizionario/evan_det.php?secolo=XIX&evan_id=252