Salvatore Ferretti

1817-1874. Organizer of the Evangelical Italian church in London. A man of great faith and deep humanity, in 1846 he founded a school in London to save poor Italian children from the exploitation of other Italians who used them to beg in the city and cruelly ill-treated them. The school, which he supported, giving private lessons in Italian, was put under the auspices of the “Society for the religious care and instruction of foreigners,” founded by Lord Shaftesbury. Ferretti then edited L'Eco di savonarola, a bilingual journal intended to spread the Gospel among the Italian exiles and to expose the errors of Roman Catholicism. Returning to Italy in 1861, he founded an orphanage for girls in Florence, which is still in existence.