Talk:Castel Gandolfo
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I read a 01.27.07 Associated Press article which says Pope John Paul II went skiing more than 100 times in his early years as Pope, after leaving in a car from Castel Gandolfo.
I ended up putting this in the external links, but someone may want to take the time to write about this in the main text.
Here's the link:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/POLAND_SKIING_POPE?SITE=SCCHA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
[edit] World War 2 role
Prompted by a question on the humanities reference desk: The article doesn't mention anything on its World War 2 role, which is probably of interest. The residence appears to have been used to house refugees due to its status as a neutral religious site. It may have been used to shelter Jews from Nazi persecution; whether or not, and to what extent, seems to be part of the larger debate on Pius XII's role in the war that was sparked by the book Hitler's Pope.
It was also bombed by the Allies in February 1944, which was a somewhat controversial action. There appear to be some discrepancies over what exactly happened there. Here are quotes from two sources on the subject, though note that the second one is explicitly an apologia for the Catholic Church's role in WW2. Does anyone know more about this subject or have good sources to recommend?
From: David Hapgood and David Richardson (2002). Monte Cassino: The Story of the Most Controversial Battle of World War II. Da Capo Press, p. 160. ISBN 0306811219.:
- Despite the unanimity among the American generals in the Liri Valley, the immune status of Monte Cassino and other religious sites was coming under increasing criticism. An important indication could be seen in the response to the bombing of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer residence in the Alban Hills between Rome and Anzio. Alexander's November 5 message to the Fifth Army had listed Castel Gandolfo and Monte Cassino as the two sites about which special care was to be exercised. On February 1, Allied bombs hit a convent just outside the gate of Castel Gandolfo, killing seventeen nuns. The bombing was approved by all the Allied military commanders in Italy and by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in London on the grounds that the area bombed contained not German fortifications or forces but "essential road communications."
From: William Doino Jr. (2004). "An Annotated Bibliography of Works on Pius XII, the Second World War, and the Holocaust", in Joseph Bottum and David G. Dalin: The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII. Lexington Books, pp. 131–132. ISBN 0739109065.:
- The most famous Italian refuge used during the war was Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer palace. "This summer home of the Holy Father was soon completely filled, as he had given orders that no one was to be refused," wrote Monsignor Carroll-Abbing (A Chance to Live: The Story of the Lost Children of the War [London: Longmans, Green, 1952], p. 82), who ministered there. In her diary, dated February 3, 1944, Jane Scrivener, an American nun working in Rome with the Vatican at the time, records: "The Pontifical Villa at Castel Gandolfo has been bombed. . . . The news was telegraphed in to the Vatican, and the pope gave orders to the staff at the Villa to give all possible help to the refugees" (Inside Rome with the Germans, p. 103).
- The wartime director of Castel Gandolfo was Emilio Bonomelli, whose book, I papi in campagna (Rome: Gherardo Casini, 1953), expressly notes that persecuted Jews were among those under his care (p. 439). Ronald Rychlak comments: "Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer home, was used to shelter hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jews during the war. . . . A wartime U.S. intelligence document reported that the 'bombardment of Castel Gandolfo resulted in the injury of about 1,000 people and the death of about 300 more. The highness of the figures is due to the fact that the area is crammed with refugees.' The intelligence reports also indicate that Pius himself protested the bombing. This information—from U.S. archives—shows a great deal of papal involvement in Jewish rescue operations. No one but Pope Pius XII had the authority to open these buildings to outsiders" (Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Summer 2002, p. 224).
