[3] ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, head of the religion from 1892 to 1921, wrote two letters to Italian Baháʼís and mentioned Italy a few times addressing issues of war and peace as well.
[17] Forni was of Polish extraction, lived in Ticino initially where she ran a private school for children with disabilities and presented Baháʼí teachings[18] but soon she moved to Crevenna near Lake Como.
[18] On his second trip ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and his retinue boarded the RMS Cedric in Alexandria, Egypt bound for Naples where they arrived on March 28, 1912, though they did not disembark for fear of being confused with Turks during the ongoing Italo-Turkish War.
The American Baháʼís had sent thousands of dollars for the journey, urging ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to leave the Cedric in Italy and travel to England to sail on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.
The seventh of the tablets mentioned European regions and was written on April 11, 1916, but was delayed in being presented in the United States until 1919—after the end of the First World War and the Spanish flu.
[34] The first formal vote of international sanctions against aggression, taken in 1936 by the League of Nations, when Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia causing the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was hailed by Shoghi Effendi, head of the religion from 1921 to 1957, as: "an event without parallel in human history".
[35] On May 25, 1940, Shoghi Effendi and Rúhíyyih Khanum obtained passports for Britain while in Rome - a few days later Italy entered World War II.
This was followed by a new edition of John Esslemont's Baháʻu'lláh and the New Era, a special copy of which, bound in tooled green leather, was sent to the archives of the Baháʼí Faith in Palestine.
[43] Architect Andrea Rocca, Professor Emeritus of the Beaux Arts Academy of Carrara, assisted in work with the Shrine as well as the later International Archives building.
[19] Its first members were: Dr. Ugo Giachery, Friedrich Schar, Dr. Alessandro Bausani, Marion Little, Prof. Mario Fiorentini, Anna Kunz, Stella Lanzar, Anne Lynch, and Elsa Steinmetz.
[53] In January 1954 it was announced Hand of the Cause Dorothy Beecher Baker had died in a plane crash near the island of Elba en route to Rome from Pakistan where she had toured after helping an international conference in India.
[54] In February that all the goals assigned to Italy and Switzerland had all been settled by pioneers: Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Rhodes.
[93] Human Rights Day observances with Baháʼís were also scheduled in many Italian cities - Bologna, Mantua, Padua, Milan, Genova, Turin and Florence.
[98] In May 1969 Prof. Bausani gave a talk at a public meeting in Lipari at which some 60 people attended - the subject was on "the atomic age and the crisis in today's society" and mentioned the religion.
Copies of The Proclamation of Baháʼu'lláh were presented to leading local dignitaries and a number of events were held: public conferences, round-table discussions, a concert, and slide shows.
[106] The following year among the presentators for the 287 students was Dr. Firuz Kazemzadeh, former chairman of the National Assembly of the United States, and Prof. Alessandro Bausani, who, in addition to giving two courses, translated for the English, Persian and French speaking teachers.
[123] On October 21, 1966, a review of the pamphlet, One God, One Truth, One People, by Dr. Ugo Giachery, appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Secolo in Genoa Italy.
[125] Augusto Robiati published a number of small books and articles in Italian including an introduction to the religion and about the role of assemblies and other works.
Along with informational talks from Baháʼí teachings music was interspersed from various Baha'i musicians like Seals and Crofts, Dizzy Gillespie, England Dan and John Ford Coley as well as Italian artists.
[159] The Italian firm Industria dei Marmi Vicentini, one of the largest of Italy at least since the 1990s,[160] produced a brochure covering the dedication and building to acquaint potential customers with the quality of its work in architectural marble.
The displays included Baháʼí literature - Milan's had materials in Arabic, English, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, as well as two books in Braille.
A special guest at the Milan booth was the French Baháʼí author, Andre Brugiroux, who presented his film La Terre n'ext qu'un Seul Pays (The Earth is but One Country).
[163] The Baháʼís in Francavilla al Mare held their first public proclamation event June which was covered by the local newspaper, Il Messaggero Abruzzo.
Among the guests were Roberto Bandinelli, a retired Harbor Office employee who was the first to arrive at the scene of the crash in 1954, and Domenico Barbieri, who was mayor of Portoferraio at the time.
[73] A January 1988 episode of a 45-minute program in an Italian television series on "Men and Prophets" was devoted entirely to the religion with an independent introduction by Prof. Sergio Noia, a lecturer in languages and literature at the Catholic University of Milan describing the independent nature of the faith, explained its clear distinction from Islam, and showed that religious fanaticism has been the cause of the persecution of the religion to the present.
[13] This event was compared with the migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to the region of Aleppo, the journey of Moses towards the Promised Land, the flight into Egypt of Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus, and the Hijrah of Muhammad.
With such themes as a backdrop it was also a purpose of the conference to raise the spirits of Baháʼís, increase the rate of pioneers traveling to goal areas, and the state of funds.
Professor Alessandro Bausani, as Chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of Italy, welcomed everyone to the conference and noted the attendance of ten Hands of the Cause and all the members of the Continental Board of Counselors were introduced.
Speeches reviewed a range of topics across 3 days - the circumstances of Baháʼu'lláh's trip, the cornerstone of the unity of mankind as a core teaching of the religion, the propagation of The Proclamation of Baha'u'llah as a collection of his works written around this anniversary, reports on the status of some of the communities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as well as a summary of the worldwide community, the progress of the then being built Baháʼí House of Worship in Panama, a history of Akká and events in Baháʼu'lláh's lifetime.
Giornale di Sicilia, a daily paper of Palermo, ran an article about interviewing Dizzy Gillespie in Bergamo noting his religion as Baháʼí in.