A man walks amid the graves of the 335 victims of one of the worst World War II-era massacres in German-occupied Italy at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, on its 79th anniversary, Friday, March 24, 2023. 335 people were shot to death on March 24, 1944, as a reprisal for an attack by partisans that killed 33 Nazi soldiers on a street in Rome. (Credit: Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP.)
ROME – Across the Catholic world, March 24 is a date with special significance because of one single death – that of El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980, and who’s now venerated as a towering martyr and a saint.
In Italy, however, March 24 calls to mind not just one death, but 335. That’s the number of Italian civilians, including political prisoners and Jews, who were executed in 1944 by German forces then occupying Rome as a reprisal for the deaths of 33 German troops during an attack by Italian partisans on a Roman street called Via Rasella the day before.
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