Hundreds of people showed up in Rome to protest the requiem service for the convicted Nazi Erich Priebke, who died under house arrest in Rome last week. Priebke was jailed for life in 1998 for his role in the World War II massacre of 335 Italians at Rome’s Ardeatine Caves in 1944.
He was one of the SS officers present during the killing of these men and boys at the caves. He admitted to shooting and killing at least two of them. The massacre was a reprisal attack ordered by Adolf Hitler for the killing of 33 German soldiers in Rome by resistance fighters. He was among the officers who oversaw the operation to round up victims and transport them to a network of caves on the outskirts of the city where they were all shot dead.
Priebke spent nearly 50 years as a fugitive before being extradited to Italy from Argentina in 1995 to stand trial for the murders committed in 1944. He was hiding in Argentina where he was discovered working as a school teacher. He was tracked down by an American journalist and admitted in an interview his role in the massacre. Even though he admitted his role in the massacre, he never once expressed any remorse and maintained he was only following orders.
Priebke, who had been living in the apartment of his lawyer, Paolo Giachini, in Rome, was allowed to do his own shopping, go for walks in the park and go out to restaurants in the evening to eat with friends.
He died at the age of 100. In his final interview, released upon his death, he denied the Nazis gassed Jews during the Holocaust and accused the West of inventing such crimes to cover up atrocities committed by the Allies during WWII.
As his body was stored in a Rome hospital morgue, a debate arose over what to do with his mortal remains. Neither Rome, nor his adopted homeland of Argentina, nor his hometown in Germany wanted him. His lawyer called for a Catholic funeral Mass. Pope Francis’ Vicar for Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, refused him a church funeral on the grounds that it could create a public disturbance or allow the service to be used by Holocaust-deniers to promote a political agenda.
Not only did the church refuse services for Priebke but Rome’s police chief and the government prefect for the capital announced they would prohibit “any form of solemn or public celebration” for him because of public safety. Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino said the city would accept neither a church funeral nor a burial for him. It was a double whammy from both church and state. The Jewish community in Rome greatly appreciated the refusal to afford him a public funeral. “Any demonstration of honor, civil or religious, would be an intolerable affront to the memory of those who fell in the fight for freedom of Nazism and fascism,” said the head of Italy’s Jewish communities, Renzo Gattegna.
Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici, chief rabbi of Rome’s Jewish community, suggested Priebke be cremated and his ashes dispersed in the air “like those of our grandparents. He would be cremated while dead, unlike the millions of children who went into the ovens and for whom Priebke never had pity.”
In an affront to most involved in this emotional crisis, the schismatic Society of St. Pius X decided to give Priebke a public Christian funeral Mass. The society was formed in 1969, and it is opposed to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including its outreach to the Jewish people. They left the church after their leader, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated bishops without the pope’s permission. Pope Benedict tried to restore union with them to no avail. The Society has no legal standing in the Roman Catholic Church. One of their leading bishops, Richard Williamson, made headlines in 2009 when he denied that any Jews were killed in gas chambers during the Holocaust.
At the funeral, as Priebke’s casket arrived for the funeral service, hundreds mobbed the hearse, shouting “murderer” and “executioner.” The priest from the Society of St. Pius X who was planning on celebrating the funeral was met with loud shouts of “shame,” as they stormed the police lines. Not all reacted violently; some of the heirs of the massacre added their voices to those who said it was time to make peace with the past.
“I am not interested in this fury over a cadaver,” Massimiliano Smeriglio, a regional lawmaker whose grandfather was killed in the caves said. “I think it’s an error that doesn’t help those who honor the values of the Resistance and the Italian Republic.”
Father Joseph D. Wallace is coordinator, Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs, Diocese of Camden.
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