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Italy's Need
 The
following statistics are from ‘Operation World’, 21st
Century Edition, P. Johnstone & J. Mandryk, 2001.
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80% of Italians claim to be
Catholic, but only 10% practice their religion. The church has
lost 10 million to new age thinking, the occult and
materialistic secularism.
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Occultism is widespread. There
are over 100,000 full-time consulting magicians. Satanism is
strong in the north, Turin being one of the global centers of
its activities, which includes praying for the removal of all
evangelical missionaries from Italy.
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Only 1,500 of Italy’s 33,500
communities have an established evangelical witness. The
northeastern Veneto Region has 4 million + people, but only
38 churches and 2,000 evangelical Christians.
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The Friulians are an
unreached minority with their own distinctive
culture and language.
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There is very little outreach in
this region with the good news of Jesus Christ.
The most recent statistics indicate:
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Less than 1% of Italians are
protestant and very few of them are born again Christians.
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According to the latest Italian
census, there are 59 million residents of which 338 thousand are
protestants.
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There is only one evangelical
missionary for every 200,000 people.
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90% of all missionaries in Italy
drop out within 5 year of service due to lack of results and
discouragement.
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The cults are growing in Italy. In
Rome, the largest Moslem mosque outside of an Arab country was
recently constructed.
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