New Scientology Church in Padova, Italy, promotes aligned community action to lower crime and improve moral values

At a conference and open house April 27, at the new Church of Scientology of Padova, Italy, Church officials released a new brochure aimed at uplifting the community and lowering crime rates.

The brochure, Scientology: How We Help—Creating a World of Honesty, Trust & Self Respect, describes The Way to Happiness, a nonreligious moral code that is improving the quality of lives the world over.

Guests, including public officials, police officers and other community leaders, received copies of The Way to Happiness and the new brochure and heard an overview of the program and its effectiveness in lowering crime rates and improving the quality of life.

The Way to Happiness, written by author, humanitarian and Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, is a moral code based on common sense. Because it is entirely nonreligious, its 21 precepts apply to people of any race, culture or creed.

Speakers introduced attendees to an entire curriculum developed to make the 21 precepts of the booklet even more simple to grasp: an educator’s guide, lesson plans, a series of short films—public service announcements—that communicate the essence of each of the precepts, and a feature-length book-on-film. The Church offered to provide these materials free of charge to educators and community groups wishing to implement the program.

The new brochure presents results of putting The Way to Happiness to use. When copies of the booklet were hand-delivered to rebel factions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2008, combatants on both sides of the conflict laid down their arms. In St. Louis, Missouri, the most dangerous city in the United States in 2012, a concerted effort by an interfaith alliance to distribute copies of the booklet resulted in crime dropping 21 percent. In Colombia, described by the United Nations in 2004 as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere,” when the country’s police force distributed copies of The Way to Happiness to 20 percent of the population, crime in the country dropped significantly.

Immensely popular since its first publication in 1981, more than 100 million copies of The Way to Happiness have been distributed in 205 countries and territories, providing a moral compass anyone can live by.

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The Church of Scientology Padova held its grand opening at the beautifully restored 18th-century Villa Francesconi-Lanza at Via Potevigodarzere in October 2012. An Ideal Scientology Organization (Ideal Org), its facilities are configured to service Scientologists and serve as a home for the entire community—a meeting ground of cooperative effort to uplift citizens of all denominations.

The Church of Scientology and its members are proud to share the tools for happier living contained in The Way to Happiness with all who work to build a better world. For more information, visit www.Scientology.org/thewaytohappiness