Germany - Chiesta del Cristo Evangelico Luterana

An evangelical service was celebrated in Rome in great secrecy for the first time in 1817 by a new, small community of believers. That community only emerged publicly at the time of the building of its own church in 1871, when Rome became the capital of Italy.

In line with the wishes of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the church was designed to have an obviously ‘Protestant’ appearance. Indeed, the project was entrusted to the German architect Franz Schwechten, who had already built the Memorial Church in Berlin. He sought out building materials from the cities of central Germany, which had links to the life of Martin Luther, and endowed the bell tower with a copy of the set of bells in use in the church at Wittenberg Castle. Due to the outbreak of the First World War, however, the new place of worship was only consecrated in 1922.

It was only in 1983 that Pope St John Paul II became the first Pope to visit this place of worship, later to be followed by his successors, Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and Pope Francis in 2015.