July 9, 2025 Show with Matt Schvaneveldt on “Bringing the Gospel of Sovereign Grace to Northern Italy”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this ninth day of July 2025.

Before I introduce my guest for the day and my special co-host, I want to ask our listeners to continue praying for those in Kerrville, Texas, and the surrounding areas. As most of you, if not all of you know by now, there has been a devastating flood there, and the death toll across Texas has risen to at least 119 souls.

Over 173 people are still missing, with 161 of those missing in Kerr County, and this is quite a devastation. 36 of the lives lost were children, and so we want you to continue to pray for those who are heroically out there risking their lives on rescue missions, and pray for the families who have already been informed that their loved ones have perished.

Pray for those who might still be alive but not yet rescued or even found, that the Lord would be kind to them and merciful, and that they would be rescued from this nightmare that has taken place there.

I have a website of a very solid Reformed Baptist church in Kerrville, Texas, that is an excellent site for enabling you to provide funds and your support for the flood relief efforts of this church. It's Kerrville Bible Church in Kerrville, Texas, and the website is kerrvillebiblechurch .org forward slash flood-relief.

That's kerrvillebiblechurch .org forward slash flood-relief. Kerrville is spelled K-E-R-R-villebiblechurch .org forward slash flood-relief. And perhaps at some point in the near future, we'll be able to have someone from Kerrville Bible Church or another like-minded group of brethren in the area who can give us some more updates and also can let us know about ways that we can all be of assistance to them.

But keep staying tuned to Iron Trip and Zion Radio for more details on that. But I'm thrilled to have a first-time guest today, my friend who is the co-host who's been on the program before, Brian McLaughlin, who is the president of SecureComm Group.

If you listen to this program regularly, you will know that Brian and SecureComm Group are faithful and generous sponsors of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. And Brian just got back recently from a trip to Italy, where he was involved in some outdoor evangelistic efforts in the area, and I immediately said to him I thought it would be a great idea for us to have a theologically like-minded man of God who is either doing mission work or church planting out in Italy to come on the program and Brian could co-host with me, and that's exactly what we're doing today.

And I have the honor and privilege for the very first time to have on the program Matt Swannevelt, a Reformed Baptist Christian church planter in northern Italy, and we're discussing bringing the gospel of God's sovereign grace to northern Italy, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Matt Swannevelt.

Thank you. Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on this program. Actually, I had listened to this program a long time ago when my children were young. I remember rocking them to sleep listening to this.

For me, it was a podcast being overseas, but it's a pleasure to be on the show.

Wow. Well, many, many thousands of others have fallen asleep listening to this program, so you're in good company. Well, I'm honored that I had such a significant part of the raising of your children, or at least one child.

And also, welcome back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, my friend Brian McLaughlin. I can think of no better way to have a program on Italy than to have Arnzen, Swannevelt, and McLaughlin talking about this issue.

But Brian, welcome back to the show. For some reason, I can't hear you, brother. I can't hear you. I heard you fine.

My mic is on?

Yeah. Now it's on.

My mic is on. Okay. All right. Well, a pleasure to be here again. And under these unique circumstances of just coming back from Italy and being here with Matt, I think we will have a lot of great thoughts, insights, and stories to tell.

So looking forward to it.

And let me right away give our listeners our email address. If you have questions of your own for Matt Swannevelt and for Brian McLaughlin, and our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Before I pass the baton over to Matt Swannevelt, Brian, why don't you tell our listeners about your experiences during your recent trip to Italy?

Sure.

This was a trip that my wife, who is of Italian descent, has really wanted to take this trip for a long time. And it always seemed like, for whatever reason, the trip got postponed. Not from anything on my end, trying to sabotage the trip to Italy, but it was always something.

Whether it was COVID, whether it was things with the kids, marriages, babies, whatever, but it always got postponed. The interesting thing is, in our lives, and we've been married almost 43 years, and the Lord saved me almost 30 years ago, my wife has remained in the Roman Catholic Church for most of those years.

And it's probably a good thing, and God's timing is always perfect, that God did not allow me to go to Italy many years ago, because it probably would have been a disaster. And it's just, I guess, how God works in our hearts, how he matures us, how he prepares us for this journey and for things in our lives.

And so, at this point, it was something that, I guess, I was looking forward to. And kind of during COVID is when my wife really came to trust the Lord and began to attend New Hyde Park Baptist Church full-time with me, and really become part of the fellowship at New Hyde Park.

So, praise God. I mean, that's just a blessing. Two of my other children are believers, and when we're in Tennessee with my other daughter, we attend a solid Baptist Church there. So God has just been doing amazing things.

But going to Italy, I guess I had, I don't know, I guess the thought was, oh, going there, I wonder if, you know, my wife is going to be seduced by the whole, you know, the Vatican, the pomp, the majesty, the whole thing.

But I just, you know, trusted the Lord and said, God, you know, her faith is true and real, and you've regenerated her and brought her to faith, and, you know, I have nothing to worry about, I guess. It was very interesting because, I mean, we went to many cities from the Amalfi Coast, Torrento, Rome, Florence, Orvieto.

We went to Venice. But Rome, we were in Rome when the new pope was chosen, when the white smoke came out of the chimney, and many people were super excited, and it was kind of a big thing. And, well, we did not go for that.

We went to dinner that night, but we had a great dinner.

Now, I'm sure you took up James White, our mutual friend from Alpha Omega Ministries, up on his suggestion, because I think he likes the McDonald's in Rome.

I couldn't do that, I could not bring myself to do that.

I am still utterly amazed that he will go to a place like Rome and eat at McDonald's, and no other places than White.

Yeah, if there was an olive garden, he would go there, too. Yes. What are you going to do?

I seriously doubt there is an olive garden in Italy. I can't imagine there being one.

I didn't know that.

But the really wonderful thing about it, Italy is a beautiful country. And it, I mean, we were in Pompeii as well, and seeing Mount Vesuvius, just everything about it, the history. But what really was interesting was, and I was really happy that my wife, Elaine, really listening to the guides, and listening to the history, and listening about to the stories about the Roman Empire and how that functioned, and then how the Roman church kind of came in after that, and how it was, how the government and the church functioned, and being from the temples that were built during the Roman Empire, some of those remained, some of those were converted into churches.

Some of them were dismantled, and the materials were just used to build other giant monuments. And it seemed like each city had, you know, a magnificent architectural building called the church that, in fact, one church, I forget where we saw so many churches, was, took 300 years to build.

And it seemed like one of the other big, I guess, things that they focused on were filling, or not filling the churches, but getting relics into these churches. So you saw the superstition in the churches, and that they would look for, you know, the bones of this one, the head of another person.

I think one church claimed to have the finger of Mary's mother. I don't know. It was just, after a while, you just, I don't know, what is going on? I'm actually looking at, it was interesting, but you kind of saw that these magnificent architecture, I mean, the craftsmanship, everything about them was absolutely spectacular.

But after you saw a few of them, and they really seem like just, they were dead buildings. In fact, very little scripture anywhere. Lots of incredible artwork, obviously beautiful sculptures and everything.

But you really didn't see the word of God anywhere. You didn't hear, you never heard really any stories of the gospel. You know, tons of, you know, of history. Most of the history is, you know, centered around man.

These things are built really to glorify men. And so it was, I think for anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear, you would not be moved in a faith way of to say that this is the true church or this church possesses the gospel.

You're going to come away from it saying, wow, incredible engineering, architecture, the brilliant, you know, painting, sculptures, and just, but it really is all to honor man. And that's what I came away from it.

And just listening to my wife, she kind of came away from it the same way. Loved Italy, loved everything about it. But it was a, it was kind of from a gospel perspective, very empty. I had many Bible tracts with me that I was able to, to hand out.

I had some discussion with people about the gospel. Actually, the most lengthy conversation I had was with the Jewish, with an elderly Jewish man, which was, which was great, which is incredible because it's kind of So what brought you here?

You know, what was the, what did you expect? What did you want to see? And how do you, how do you view this? And, you know, it was interesting, but not, I guess, but not surprising is, you know, whatever, religion's religion, you know, be the person that seems to be good enough, you get to heaven, but we had a great gospel conversation and was able to go back to the Old Testament, was able to talk about Abraham and how he was justified before a holy God and then talk about Isaiah and when Isaiah 53.

So, and then left him with some literature as well to read. And so it was great. I had a great time and just, you know, the seeds that were planted, we just entrusted to the Lord that he will bring the inquiry, but it was a great experience.

Well, you are to be congratulated because not too many people would do that on a vacation, would spend their time passing out tracts and evangelizing. I mean, I'm assuming that you were speaking in English.

Do you speak Italian at all?

No, I've heard a few words. Allora, allora, uncamo, uncamo.

I've heard a few words.

Not with the tracts in English or Italian?

They were in English. They were in English.

You really came prepared, didn't you?

And it's true at Rome. At Rome, when you were there, it was full of internationals, so it was a great opportunity.

Yeah. Let me tell you one thing that they have down, and I think Mel Brooks would be very, very proud of that, and that's merchandising, merchandising. They have it down. When you go to the Vatican, it is like a well-oiled machine of, you know, I mean, I don't know how much money they take in there a day, but it has to be in the millions, and they have it down.

So even when you come out and everything, there's the souvenir store right there, and, you know, it was very interesting. But I think for those that know and love the Lord, when you see that kind of, I guess, wealth and just pomp, I guess, and it may be because, you know, my business is in, we do the majority of our work in Manhattan.

So I'm around the super rich, and the places where we provide our services for are in the most expensive buildings and residences and things in the world. So you kind of, I mean, so maybe at first, when I was younger, that was kind of a big deal.

It was kind of like, you know, like a little bit in awe, like, ooh, wow, but then after a while, it's just brick and mortar. That's all it is. You may have bigger spaces to live in, more of this, but at the end of the day, that's all it is.

But when you look at all these buildings and all these massive temples and you look at what went into it and the blood and sweat and the money and everything it took to raise the money for these things and how it was done in the name of God and look at it, it really just leaves you saying, wow, talk about like, just not getting it.

Is they, they just don't get it. But that, but that's really every, I probably say every religion besides biblical Christianity is man some way was, you know, trying to earn work or whatever, or, and do stuff like that.

So that's what I came away with. I appreciated the, you know, the, the, the talent, the efforts and things went into it, but it really didn't translate. It does not translate into the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

Matt Schvaneveldt’s Salvation Testimony and Call to Italy

Well, Matt Swannevelt, we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, and we have first time guests. We have those guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you may have been raised and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So let's hear a summary of your story.

Oh, that's great. I am, there's the amazing part of that. I'm a missionary in Italy, as you've already tuned in on our last names is that I'm from Montana. So I didn't, I didn't even come from New York and New Jersey or someplace like that to get over there.

But when I was born, my parents weren't Christians. My, my father was raised in a Mormon family, but he wasn't, he wasn't practicing himself and my mother was agnostic and someone invited my mother to a woman's Bible study called BSF and they went through the book of John and it was just my mom going through that, that study.

I can't remember exactly what chapter, but the Lord just touched her heart and changed her. And praise the Lord. She brought the gospel into our family. So I have three siblings. And so my father got saved shortly after.

And then I was, I was fairly young when I made a profession of faith and then the gospels explained to me clearly. So I was around eight and made public profession of faith and was baptized. And from that point on, we just kind of all grew up together as first generation Christians and I just, I praise the Lord for those Bible studies.

They're just, it's amazing when you just open the word of God, the, the power and how he uses that just to transform lives and transform families. And from that, he, there was kind of an adventure of, of course, there's different steps in him preparing me for, for his call in my life and for ministry.

And there's certainly different specific phases in that. Probably the one that stands out that was one of the more important was when I was in college, I was, I got a copy of the holiness of God by R .C. Sproul.

And I think it was at that point where the Lord really just showed me how, how big he was and how huge he was. And it was in that context that I really felt called to the mission field. And so from there, kind of, there's a kind of a long story of praying about where that might be.

And I went back to Montana after I finished university and worked as a youth pastor in a church, trying to raise support to go overseas. My, my plan was my roommate and I in college, he's actually a Reformed Baptist pastor right now in, in, in Georgia.

But we were praying for the ex-Yugoslavian countries. And there was tension in 1999 when I was trying to get overseas. And the, the, the, it was, it wasn't possible for me to get a visa in, in one of the ex-Yugoslavian states.

And so I brought the youth group of my church on an evangelistic mission trip at central Italy in a town called Pescara. And we did minds and street evangelism and music for about three weeks. And it was there that I met a mission organization that was trying to start a church in Trieste, Italy, which is in the Northeast corner, couldn't get more far in the Northeast than Trieste.

It's on the, actually on the border of Slovenia, right on the, on the Adriatic Sea. And so it was neat to see that that was as close as I could get to the ex-Yugoslavian countries at the time. And there was an offer to, to, to work on a church plant there.

And so I went back to my church and kind of told them about, about this opportunity. They were very excited and, and sent me over. And that was in 2000.

So this all came about through God's providence to go to Italy because of your inability to get to Yugoslavia.

That's exactly right.

Wow.

And, uh, I don't think so because I don't think I could have learned, I don't think I could have learned Serbian or Croatian. I think, I think Italian is probably my, my limit. So God knew what he was doing, obviously.

And you didn't have to spend three, three, three days in a fish. That's good.

There's that too.

So God gave you an offer you could not refuse, I guess. Before this happened, tell us how you came to discover and fall in love with and embrace the doctrines of Reformed theology.

Oh, that's a good question. I went to Liberty University, not famous for its Reformed theology. And, but as a young, as a young Christian, we obviously on our dorm halls, we had lots of debates and probably the most popular debate, of course, was between Calvinism and Arminianism.

And I remember debating it back and forth. And I actually worked at a church in the DC area in the summers. And, uh, my friend and I, we brought the conversation to a visiting pastor who was, who was very, very much trying to convince us, uh, about the Arminian position, but he says, if you want to understand the, the, the Calvinistic, uh, perspective, my encouragement would be to read, uh, A .W. Pink's book, The Sovereignty of God.

So I took him up on that and I read, I read Pink and then from Pink, I think I moved to MacArthur and MacArthur to Boyce and Boyce to Sproul and Sproul to Calvin. Uh, and so there's that golden chain of, uh, of, uh, Reformed theology that the Lord just kind of took me deeper and deeper into his Word.

And again, I think understanding just how, just how big God is. And it just seemed very clear to me that the right answer to that question.

Amen. Well, we are going to be returning to our discussion after our first commercial break. If you'd like to join us on the air again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name, at least city and state of residence. And your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence in your country of residence.

James White here of Alpha and Omega Ministries announcing that this September I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend, Chris Arnson has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m. I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville.

Then on Sunday, September 21st at 1 30 PM, I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme. Can we trust the Bible is the authentic and inerrant word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events for more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon.

Visit ironsharpensironradio .com. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

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Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the Secure Comm Group. And supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. Secure Comm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

We can be reached at SecureCommGroup .com. That's SecureCommGroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner, Eric Liddell, remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sensed that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God, that love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area, or Queens, or Brooklyn, or the Bronx, in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

God bless you.

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, this is Chris Arnzen of Iron Turban Zion Radio. Co-hosting the program today with me is my longtime friend and also sponsor of this program, Brian McLaughlin of Secure Calm Group.

And we have a first-time guest today that we are interviewing on bringing the gospel of God's sovereign grace to Northern Italy, Matt Swannevelt. And if you have any questions about this subject, about Italy in general, about the doctrines of sovereign grace in general, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And Pastor Swannevelt, from what I understand, you started out as a missionary, but then wound up becoming, by God's grace and providence, a church planter.

Church Planting in Trieste and Udine

Yeah, that's true. So I came over to basically to help out at a church plant, and then kind of in the process, the Lord was forming me to plant a church. So I spent 15 years in Trieste in 2000, 2015, working on a church plant, which is that Trieste is the largest city.

It's the capital of our region. There's 20 regions in Italy.

Can you spell that for us?

Yeah, it's T-R-I-E-S-T-E, Trieste. And it's about almost a quarter of a million inhabitants. And so it was so exciting just to see God working in the city that's famous for, it's actually famous for its coffee.

It's the coffee capital of Italy. They produce some of the most famous coffees there. The most famous is probably Il Caffè, which is made in Trieste. And so it's also a science center. There's a lot of physics research centers in the area, and they have a synchrotron to spin the atoms and do some testing.

So it's just a big international community right on the sea. It's a beautiful city. And what a privilege to be able to serve the Lord with these beautiful people and just to see the Lord work in their lives.

And by God's grace, people were converted and the church was formed and we were able to establish elders and a pastor. And so I worked on that for the first 15 years. And now the Lord's moved me to a town that's about 50 miles away.

It's called Udine, U-D-I-N-E, Udine. It's the second largest city in our region. It's about a hundred thousand people who live there. And so we're working, I've been there since 2021, working on a church plant, actually linked with someone you've had on the show in the past, Ken Wells, who served there and worked there for many years.

And Ken was the one that referred me to you for this interview, actually.

That's right. That's right. He's just a dear brother, a great example, I think also for, certainly for me in my life. It's always amazing to see the godly men that the Lord brings into our lives just to train us, to be good examples for us.

And so when he went back to New York, and as he went back to New York, I was kind of sent over by the church in Trieste to try to help out for a bit. And then the church started just to grow up pretty rapidly, quickly.

And so it's growing. It's been kind of an exciting work that's going on in Udine, just to give you a reference. In 15 years in Trieste, we went from zero to 50 believers in those 15 years. But in Udine, we started with, there were six.

And then now we have about almost 100 that are regular attenders in the church. So it's nothing that I've seen before in ministry in Italy. So it's been just super exciting. There's a wonderful body that love God's Word, that's very active.

And so we really praise the Lord. We actually really can see a big difference in what he's doing in northeast Italy these past 25 years. The climate's changed. There's a lot more churches. There's a lot more activity.

So we're very thankful for that.

And in Rome, there's over 900 church buildings in the city of Rome, but only maybe half of those churches are actually being used. I'm assuming the other, the churches that are just kind of sitting dormant and empty are either not allowed to be used for.

And I was kind of trying to ask the question to some of the guys about that. Well, it seems like the government there is also very protective about the churches, the church uses, even there was one particular evangelical church, I think right around the Vatican, that they were denying them to be recognized as a church because they claimed, well, it doesn't look like a church.

And they were like, yeah, that's exactly right.

That's actually a Reformed Baptist church in Rome, probably one of the best examples, I think, for the churches in Italy and really neat, a neat pastor there who's just done a great job. And they were trying to get tax exemption, like the Catholic Church or for other religious buildings, and it passed for two.

But on the last trial or whatever, the whole idea was botched because it didn't look enough. There wasn't enough symbols on the wall and things like that, which was a little bit devastating, I think, for all of the evangelical churches, just because when there's a church where there's a precedent, then it's going to make it a lot easier for other churches to be able to go through the same issue.

In fact, that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we have, I think, in the evangelical church in Italy is there's really no precedent and there's not a lot of permission. So often we have to legally act as if we're a type of association or some kind of official club, but we're not really recognized as a church.

We don't have the power to marry easily. We don't have power to go into the hospitals or to the prisons. I mean, we can get into the prisons. We just can't get out. But to get that legal status for us to be able to be official ministers, to have an official building is a very complicated process.

And I'm really excited about the association, the organization that I work for. It's called Serenissima Ministry Group. And what we're really trying to do is we're trying to now use our resources and possibilities that we have to try to establish some kind of structure that we probably, our generation, won't be able to reap the benefits of it.

But our prayer is for maybe our children or our grandchildren, that structure will be in place where we will be able to easily become pastors that are recognized, that we'll be able to be able to give a pay stub, to have workers who can be paid through the tax system.

Because right now it's very complicated if you want to run a church like a church is organized in the United States. It's a very complicated, very expensive process right now.

And Brother Matt, I am a former Roman Catholic. I was born and raised in New York, Amityville, Long Island, to be more precise. And it is very common in New York and a number of other places in the northeast of the United States for evangelicals to be former Roman Catholics, ranging from nominal to very religious Roman Catholics.

At one time, when I was very young, I was a very religious Roman Catholic, I was an altar boy. I believed in all the ritual. And one thing I can say that I thank God for, even though I abandoned Rome and thankfully was delivered from its false gospel and superstitions, I definitely had instilled in my mind and heart a firm belief in God that I never abandoned, even during years of absolute rebellion.

As a teenager and in my early 20s, as much as I was living like the devil, I, in my mind and heart, did believe that God was true and that Jesus Christ was God and so on. But the average person, at least in northern Italy, that you have encountered, the people that are visiting your congregation and, by grace, coming to embrace the true gospel, what is their typical background, or is there even a typical background?

Do they also range from totally secular to very strongly Roman Catholic? Before embracing the gospel, what is the situation there in northern Italy that you've experienced?

That's a great, that's a good question. And what's neat about Italy is often the answer to that question really depends upon which city you live in. For example, in Trieste, which is very commercial, scientific, we found that most of our conversations were with people that come from a secular or materialistic kind of ideology.

But when we move just a little ways over to Udine, we noticed that there's a stronger sense of Catholicism, of kind of being faithfully religious in kind of the traditions of the relatives. And so we have noticed that to be more the case in Udine, where there's more conversations with Catholics.

And kind of to your point, it's really neat how, in God's grace, he uses even the Catholic Church not only to protect, I think, some of the morality, while I believe Italy is probably the most conservative or one of the most conservative countries in Europe right now.