Prochet, Matteo

PROCHET, MATTEO: Italian Waldensian; b. at Lucerna San Giovanni (30 m. s.w. of Turin) Sept. 28, 1836; d. at Rome Feb. 16, 1907. He was educated at the Waldensian college of Torre-Pellice, and, after serving the required year in the army, he studied theology at Florence and spent a semester in the Presbyterian College, Belfast. After serving as an evangelist in Lucca and Pisa (1861–66), and Genoa (1866–70), he was the first Protestant clergyman to enter Rome after its capture by Victor Immanuel, and there founded a Waldensian church (1870), of which he was pastor till 1875, although in 1871 he had been appointed president of the Italian Evangelization Committee, a position which he retained until 1906, when he was compelled to retire from active life on account of the age limit. He must be regarded as almost the pioneer in the modern active Protestant propaganda in Italy.