||This article's lead section may not adequately summarize key
points of its contents. (April 2012)| |Waldensian Evangelical
Church| Statue of Peter Waldo at the Luther Memorial at Worms,
Germany. |Founding date:||about 1177; in 1532 acceded to Franco-
Swiss Protestant Reform| |Headquarters:||Torre Pellice,
Piemonte, Italy| |Countries:||Argentina, France, Germany, Italy,
United States, and Uruguay| The movement was started partly in
response to the schisms that had consumed the Catholic church in
the 12th century and advocated a return to the vows of poverty
and preaching of the Gospel as advocated by Jesus and his
disciples in the New Testament. Originally a reform movement
within the Catholic Church, the movement was declared heretical
by 1215 and became persecuted by Church officials. Upon the rise
of the Protestant Reformation, church leaders met with Swiss and
German Calvinists and agreed to join with the Reformed church,
adopting many of the Calvinist tenets and becoming its Italian
arm. Although the chu