René Breuel: Bringing the Gospel and pizza to post-Catholic Italy

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René Breuel (born 1983) was born in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, where his grandparents had migrated from Germany, fleeing the depression of the Interbellum. His father and his mother –both doctors– met in a local hospital and chose a sincere Christian life under the influence of a Baptist church plant in Brazil's largest city.

Already as a teenager, René felt called to the ministry. "I was very blessed by my church's preaching and Christian life. I was part of a youth group that went on missionary trips to remote villages and into the Amazon. I also experienced a crisis of faith in high school, where my atheist teacher of philosophy pretty much demolished my faith. But ultimately, to wrestle with his objections only deepened my faith and contributed to my calling to spread the good news of Christ," he says.

However, René and his parents decided it would be a good idea to learn a secular profession first, so René embarked on a study of Business Administration in Brazil, including a semester in the German city of Mannheim. He met his wife Sarah at university, who also hoped to serve in Christian ministry after business school.

The calling

In 2006, René and Sarah attended Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, an international, interdenominational seminary. There, they studied for three years and acquired their Master of Divinity. "After some time of reflection and prayer, we felt called to move to Rome to strengthen the Evangelical presence in a Roman Catholic environment," René says.

In René's view, while evangelicals and Catholics share some essential doctrines of the Christian faith (God's triunity, Christ's divinity, and the concept of salvation by grace), they differ on matters of authority (Scripture and/or Tradition), the position of the church, and the admiration or veneration of saints.

Breuel explains that Evangelicalism has grown rapidly in Brazil in recent years: the percentage of the population that identifies as Evangelical has risen from 7 per cent in the 1980s to more than 30 per cent now.

This development encouraged the growth of missionaries who have found their destination outside Brazil. René and Sarah formed part of this movement. After a year of studying the Italian language, in 2010 René and Sarah and their two-month-old baby moved to Rome, "with the blessing of a non-denominational mission agency," he notes.

Planting Hopera

In Rome, a city with 4 million inhabitants, they knew nobody. The couple started living in the university neighbourhood and successfully established friendships and relationships with students. They also joined networks of existing Evangelical churches.

Their mission was supported by the well-known project of the late Tim Keller, 'Redeemer City to City'. "I spent a month in New York to receive Redeemer's training and coaching. It seemed like the most developed model for contextualising the message of the Gospel in contemporary urban settings. We have become part of City to City's movement in Europe since," he says.

René and Sarah founded their new 'Hopera' congregation in 2012, next to Rome's and Europe's largest university. Apart from this physical presence, their church plant also reaches out to the city through two websites (hopera.co and, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, hopera.tv). Reaching out to Italians is not a walk in the park.

Though some Italians are still culturally Catholic (especially when it comes to weddings and burials), most have become very secular by now. René has also observed that many do not know much about the Christian faith, and what they do know often perpetuates negative views. What's more, some grow to be diffident and suspicious.

"It all begins with friendships and relationships," Breuel explains. "We organise dinners, debates, and concerts and have established a seeker group for people seeking the ultimate fulfilment of their longings. After having pizza together, we read the basic stories of the Gospel with them."

Sunday services are in Italian. Most of the visitors are young. Some 80 people –half Italian and the other half from different international backgrounds– come to René's church on Sundays. René added, "We have been working on very hard ground, but the Lord is good, and his Word is life-giving. So, we persevere in faith. We are currently working to plant a second daughter church in a city outside Rome, Alatri."

While his wife Sarah has a mission of her own (leading groups of seekers and working with university students through Revive Europe), René is also a prolific writer. Already as a child, he loved books and reading. His favourite authors include C. S. Lewis, Timothy Keller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jonathan Edwards. He also admires the work of the Jewish scholar Jonathan Sacks.

From 2015-2017, he obtained a master's in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. René's book on becoming a father –he and his wife have two sons, Pietro and Matteo– is so far available in Portuguese, but his book on Mark 8 is in English: The Paradox of Happiness.

More than happiness

In this engaging book regarding Christ's words on gaining life by losing it, René deconstructs our consumerist models of happiness and proposes a radical, Jesus-based alternative. We don't find happiness when we try to fulfil our desires; we find it when we stop looking for them and focus on serving others. He also explains that by letting go, we find; by giving, we receive.

René is looking forward to contributing to CNE: "We need to engage today's culture, trends and ideas with Christ's grace and the graciousness. I'm excited to join CNE's team and growing community of readers."