Gennaro Verolino
Gennaro Verolino (born November 3, 1906 in Naples , † November 17, 2005 in Rome ) was a curial archbishop of the Catholic Church . In 1944 he helped save tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust .
Life
Gennaro Verolino completed school and philosophical-theological training at church institutions and was ordained a priest on December 23, 1928 at the age of just 22. He then studied canon and secular law at the Athenaeum S. Apollinare in Rome (today the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross ). The professors teaching there also worked for the State Secretariat and brought the young Doctor iuris utriusque to the service of the authorities and papal diplomacy.
During the Second World War , Verolino worked in Budapest as the secretary of the nuncio Angelo Rotta and participated personally in his rescue operation for Hungarian Jews . In the year of the German occupation of Budapest - March 1944 to February 1945 - according to Verolino's estimate , the nunciature issued 25,000 to 30,000 letters of protection attesting that a person was under the protection of the nunciature. Those already loaded into concentration camp transport trains were also taken out with the help of these papers, which were reluctantly respected by the occupation regime.
In 1951 Gennaro Verolini was named titular archbishop of Corinth and nuncio in Guatemala and El Salvador . On October 7, 1951, he received the episcopal ordination through Cardinal Clemente Micara . In 1957 he became nuncio in Costa Rica . In 1963 he returned to the Curia and after two stops in 1969 he became President of the Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra . He held this office until his retirement in 1986.
Verolino's important role in the rescue operation in Budapest was only known and explored around the turn of the millennium. In 2005 he was the first to receive the Swedish Per Anger Prize and in 2007 posthumously the Israeli honorary title Righteous Among the Nations .
Web links
- Entry on Gennaro Verolino on catholic-hierarchy.org
- Ho fatto il mio dovere, grazie a Dio (Interview with Gennaro Verolino, Italian, 30giorni.it, February 2005)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gennaro Verolino on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Verolino, Gennaro |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian Archbishop of the Curia, Righteous Among the Nations |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 3, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Naples |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 17, 2005 |
| Place of death | Rome |