APPIA, GIORGIO

APPIA, GIORGIO. - Waldensian pastor, son of Paolo, b. 1827, d. 1910. At Torre Pellice, between 1854 and 1855, A. founded a hospice for boys, an orphanage for girls, and the Coppieri school. In 1859-61, at the height of the Risorgimento, he was at Pinerolo. In 1861-62 he introduced Protestantism into Palermo and, during the following three years, into Naples, where, together with the Waldensian community, he established a small evangelical teacher-training school. In 1865 he taught exegesis at the Waldensian faculty in Florence, and in 1866 he was in Trentino with Garibaldi, assisting his brother Luigi, who collaborated with Dunant in founding the Red Cross. During the following forty years he resided in Paris as a Lutheran pastor. The most useful experience of his life as an ecclesiastic dissenting from Catholicism was gained in Palermo, where, in 1862, a vigorous religious controversy arose, conducted through sermons and pamphlets, between him, various priests—especially Canon Turano—and the bishop of Girgenti.