VATICAN CORNER
On All Souls Day, October 2, 2017, Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the World War II Neptuno American War Cemetery 38 miles south of Rome. It is the site where 7,860 American soldiers are buried, the majority of which died in the liberation of Sicily from the Germans in 1943. Afterward, Francis traveled to the Ardeatine Caves at the southeastern outskirts of Rome. He prayed at the war victims’ memorial there. It is an old volcanic ash quarry where in 1944 German occupying troops carried out a massacre of 335 Italian men. At the “me of the massacre Italy had surrendered to the Allies, but German military forces and Italian loyalist Fascist troops still occupied much of northern Italy, including Rome. They continued to battle with the Allied forces and with Italian partisans of the Resistance movement. The German massacre was in retaliation for a partisan attack that killed 33 German security police. Upon hearing of the attack on the policemen, Adolf Hitler reportedly suggested the destruction of Rome. Hitler himself may have endorsed the retaliation plan devised by his Colonel General Alfred Jodi which called for 10 Italian men to be rounded up and shot for each German security policeman killed. The Italians collected were innocent civilian men on the street who happened to be in the area of the attack, as well as men already in jail with a death sentence, including 57 Jews. The youngest Italian was a boy of 15, while the oldest was a man in his late 70s. The victims were forced to kneel in groups of five and then shot in the back of the head. The bodies were piled up and covered with rocks inside the caves and then explosives were used to seal the cave mouth. A year after the end of the war, the site was uncovered and the victims were removed and given proper burials. Later the caves were declared a memorial cemetery and national monument. Every year on March 24, the anniversary of the massacre, there is a solemn national commemoration held. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and now Pope Francis have paid tribute there to those innocent victims of war. Vatican City was neutral throughout the war. Both Allied and Axis aircraft crews were generally commanded to respect its neutrality even when bombing Rome. However, there were two occasions where bombs hit Vatican City. On the evening of November 5, 1943 an American plane lost its way and dropped bombs on the area south-west of Saint Peter’s Basilica, causing considerable damage and blowing windows to pieces, but causing no casualties. The second bombing was from a British plane on March 1, 1944 that accidently bombed to close to the Vatican wall. It caused the death of a workman and the injury of a Dutch student.