Vatican City, Nov 21, 2025 / 15:50 pm

Father Ubaldo Marchioni was praying the rosary with a fearful congregation in the Church of Santa Maria Assunta outside Bologna, Italy, when Nazi soldiers broke down the door on Sept. 29, 1944, and shot him in the head.

The remaining 197 people who had taken refuge in the church were forced outside to the cemetery and massacred, including 52 children. The killings marked the first day of what is now known as the Marzabotto Massacre, a large civilian massacre in which Waffen-SS units murdered at least 770 civilians between Sept. 29 and Oct. 5, 1944, including children, women, and the elderly in retaliation for local support of Italian resistance fighters.

Marchioni, a diocesan priest ordained only two years earlier, was 26 years old.

On Nov. 21, Pop

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