Pope Francis met with evangelical pastor Giovanni Traettino and 350 more Pentecostal guests whom Traettino invited on Monday, and gave a formal apology to them on behalf of Catholics for the persecution that they had experienced under Italy's fascist regime in the 1920s and 1930s.
"I am the shepherd of the Catholics and I ask you to forgive my Catholic brothers and sisters who did not understand and were tempted by the devil," he said.
Along with his apology, Pope Francis asked that the greater Christian community in Italy unite together, saying that he desires "a church that is one in its diversity," according to a Boston Globe report.
Many Pentecostal Christians who attended the event were touched by his apology. Traettino himself also expressed his gratitude.
"With a single gesture he has opened the door wider, overcoming any complications of protocol and going directly to the heart of human relations," quoted Religion News Service.
The latter report further said that everyone who attended the event were "in tears".
However, reactions from the evangelical community were not all positive. Some responded with skepticism, and questioned whether this is simply a superficial gesture to pursue "alliances with other Christian denominations," as Pastor Elpidio Pazzella described it. Pazzella is a part of the Federation of Pentecostal Churches, according to the Boston Globe.
"This is a pope who originally declared war on the Evangelical movements that have conquered many Latin American countries," the Globe quoted Pazzella.
Leonardo de Chirico, an Italian church planter, expressed similar sentiments. "There is much naiveté and superficiality. Some analysis is based on personal impressions or the seemingly evangelical language of the pope, or on truncated bits of information that fall short of taking notice of the complexity of Roman Catholicism," he wrote in a blog post.
Many members of the Italian evangelical church has been expressing their doubts about the Roman Catholic doctrines. Almost 100 percent of Italian evangelical churches and bodies signed a statement on July 19 providing "biblical standards to assess the mounting ecumenical pressure coming from the Roman Catholic Church to expand its catholicity at the expense of biblical truth. Never before have Italian evangelicals reached such a large consensus and spoken with one voice on such a crucial topic," stated the preface.
The statement said that the evangelical churches, "without passing judgment on the faith of individual people, believe nonetheless that it [Roman Catholicism] is incompatible with the teaching of Scripture to have a church that operates as a mediator of salvation and that presents other figures as mediators of grace since God's grace comes to us by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8) and without the agency of other mediators (1 Timothy 2:5)."
