Christian Congregation (Pentecostal)
organization of Pentecostal churches with roots in the Italian Pentecostal Movement
The Christian Congregation is an international non-denominational fellowship of assemblies with roots in the Italian Pentecostal revival in Chicago, which began in 1907. It can be found, for example, in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, the United States, Mozambique, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. There are approximately 3 million members, 2.5 million being in Brazil.
History
In 1907, several groups of Italian evangelicals were brought together in Chicago. Initially, they began to gather in their homes, devoid of any denomination and without any propaganda or a particular form of communication. Followed, encouraging pioneers like Louis Francescon, Rosina Balzano, Pietro Ottolini, Giacomo Lombardi, Lucia de Francesco Menna, Luigi Terragnoli, Umberto Garrazzi, Agostino Lencioni, Pietro Menconi, Giovanni Perrou and many others, to evangelize in the United States. Also abroad as in Canada, Italy, Argentina and Brazil. Consequently, many churches were founded in those places. In September 1908 Giacomo Lombardi went on a mission to Italy, where he started the movement over there. In 1909 Lombardi, Lucia Menna and Louis Francescon departed for Buenos Aires, evangelizing Michelangelo Menna and family in the countryside of that province.
The public source identifies “Christian Congregation (Pentecostal)” as organization of Pentecostal churches with roots in the Italian Pentecostal Movement. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Christian, Congregation and Pentecostal.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3686940. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1908 and 1909.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christian Congregation (Pentecostal)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.