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Pietas and its precursors have been active in Italy since the 1960s. In 1981, professor Gianfranco Barbera founded a formal community of scholars and professionals, joined by their interest in and reverence for ancient Roman culture and religious practice. By the year 2000 – or, as Pietas would say, the year 2753 ab urbe condita, “from the founding of Rome” – Barbera had laid the groundwork for groups to use practices from Rome and Magna Graecia.
Since its founding, the group has established various temples and sanctuaries. In 2008, Pietas founded Aedes Romae Pietatis in Rome as its main temple sanctuary. Shortly after, they dedicated an altar to Jupiter, and several more temples have been built throughout Italy since. Each of these temples was built as essentially individual, self-funded projects.
Pietas’s new legal entity will allow the organization to accelerate its work of building temples. It will also allow the group to collaborate with other religious bodies, both nationally and internationally.
“This moment is very important for Pietas,” the organization said in a press release. “With this act, a great milestone has been reached, the result of years of work and practice. From here begins a new path aimed at the growth of classical religion in the Beautiful Country.” (“Beautiful Country” is a classical poetic epithet for Italy.)
At its founding session, the new entity elected Giuseppe Barbera, the current president of Pietas, as its spiritual leader, bestowing on him the title pontifex maximus. Giuseppe Barbera is the son of the organization’s founder, Gianfranco.
