Someone once said that Italy has the best of the best and the worst of the worst. To many foreigners, Italy is a place you go for your holiday - to enjoy the sandy beaches, to explore the richness of its culture and arts, to have a taste of Italian cuisine, or for an adventure in the Alps. The nation has a lot to offer!! To really know Italy, however, one needs to dig deeper.

We hope that these articles can be of help to you in this respect, and a resource for prayer and intercession for our nation.

Ancient and Modern Ruins -- a survey of Italy's condition.

The ruins of the ancient Roman Empire, a world power for more than 500 years, are now a primary tourist attraction in Italy.

Ancient Roman ruins may be picturesque, but the modern ruins of Italy's spiritual and moral structures are not a pretty sight!

• Weak and unstable succession of more than 50 governments since World War II has caused political paralysis, widespread corruption and the discrediting of Italy's politicians and political parties.
• One million immigrants from Africa, especially Arabs, Eritreans and Somalis, often live illegally and marginalised on the edges of Italian society.
• Deep cultural differences exist between the wealthier and more radical northerners and the poorer, more conservative southerners.
• Occultism is widespread, and there are reckoned to be 100 000 full-time occultic practitioners - three times the number of Catholic priests.
• The infamous Sicilian Mafia and Neapolitan Camorra have infiltrated every level of society. Their power and influence is such that every legal and judicial attempt to tame this monster has failed. Government officials and leaders, and Church authorities, even in the Vatican itself, have been subverted and the attitudes of the general population poisoned by this evil system.
• There are an estimated 400 000 heroin addicts, with increasing incidence of HIV+ infection.
• Less than 2000 of Italy's villages have an established evangelical witness. The other 31 000 are unoccupied.
• The long-powerful Roman Catholic Church has lost over nine million members in this generation. Its influence and the number of priests have declined dramatically. Many Italians despise and ignore the Church.
• Protestantism is still generally perceived as a foreign sect, despite the existence of the indigenous Waldensian Church, the world's oldest Protestant denomination.
• Evangelical Christians comprise only 1% of the population.

That's the bad news. The Good News is that God still has a destiny for the Italian people! He delights in restoring the ruined places, as it says in Isaiah 61:4,
"They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations."