{"id":62407,"date":"2025-11-05T18:39:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/?p=62407"},"modified":"2025-11-06T18:47:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:47:18","slug":"why-the-vatican-was-bombed-on-this-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/2025\/11\/05\/why-the-vatican-was-bombed-on-this-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Vatican Was Bombed on This Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-130751\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/vaticano_bombardato.webp\" alt=\"bombed vatican\" width=\"602\" height=\"316\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>The <strong>motives and those responsible<\/strong> for the bombing of the <strong>Vatican<\/strong> that took place on November 5, 1943, exactly 82 years ago.<\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On the evening of <mark><strong>November 5, 1943<\/strong><\/mark>, at 8:10 p.m., an aircraft entered the airspace of Vatican City.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Five bombs<\/strong> were dropped, and four exploded within the pontifical borders, while one remained unexploded.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The detonations hit the Vatican Mosaic Laboratory, the Governor\u2019s Palace, the nearby train station, and the square in front of <strong>St. Peter\u2019s Basilica<\/strong>, causing significant material damage but \u2013 by a true miracle \u2013 no casualties.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Why Was the Vatican Bombed?<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Even today there remains <strong>an aura of uncertainty<\/strong> regarding responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Different versions attributed the action to <strong>Fascist aviators<\/strong> of the Italian Social Republic, or to an out-of-control Allied mission, or even to a single American pilot.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The most reliable version, however, was <strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vaticannews.va\/es\/vaticano\/news\/2018-11\/75-aniversario-bombardeo-vaticano-ii-guerra-mundial.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reconstructed<\/a><\/em><\/strong> in the book by <strong>Augusto Ferrara<\/strong>, <i>&#8220;1943. Bombs on the Vatican&#8221;<\/i> (LEV 2006), according to which the target was <strong>Vatican Radio<\/strong>, which broadcast messages for prisoners of war, representing a \u201cvoice\u201d unwelcome in a wartime context.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ferrara collected period documents, about thirty unpublished photographs tracing the aircraft\u2019s route, along with philatelic and postal documentation from that time, and maintains that the plane took off from the Viterbo (VT) airport and was a Savoia-Marchetti SM 79 \u201cSparviero\u201d model piloted by a <strong>Fascist officer<\/strong> under the command of Roberto Farinacci.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The reconstruction does not claim to provide a definite name for the perpetrator: there are also versions that attribute the attack <strong>to an error<\/strong> by the United States Army Air Forces during an Allied mission. Ferrara himself acknowledges the uncertainty about those responsible but favors the internal Italian lead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Vatican was bombed a second time, on March 1, 1944, with six bombs falling just outside the borders, near Porta dei Cavalleggeri. In this case, the RAF, the <strong>British Air Force<\/strong>, admitted the mistake.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>The Pope\u2019s Reaction<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the context of the world conflict, in any case, <strong>the entire city of Rome<\/strong> had been subjected for months to repeated bombings. From July 1943 until its liberation in June 1944, there were about <strong>51<\/strong> air raids on the city.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This made the Vatican State \u2013 neutral and protected by international prerogatives \u2013 a place considered <strong>safe<\/strong> by many civilians and refugees. And it was precisely this condition that made the attack even more symbolic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At that historical moment, Vatican City hosted <strong>refugees, civilians, and Jews<\/strong> and, as mentioned, broadcast radio transmissions considered strategic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Pius XII\u2019s response<\/strong> became iconic: together with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI), he went down into the streets of Rome to share in the people\u2019s suffering.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Pacelli repeated the same gesture on August 13, 1943, during a second bombing of the Italian capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The motives and those responsible for the bombing of the Vatican that took place on November 5, 1943, exactly 82 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":102,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2090,2019,2091],"class_list":["post-62407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bombed-vatican","tag-second-world-war","tag-vatican-war"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - 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