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Pope Leo XIV Recognizes Martyrdom of 2 Priests Killed by Nazis


Courtney Mares/CNA | Vatican, November 21, 2025
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-leo-xiv-recognizes-martyrdom-of-2-priests-killed-by-nazis

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.

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

On Nov. 21, Pope Leo XIV formally recognized Father Marchioni as a martyr killed “in hatred for the faith,” along with another Italian priest murdered in the same wave of violence, Father Nicola Capelli.

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