Pope Francis visited the
US cemetery in Nettuno south of Rome and then the Ardeatine
Caves on Rome's southern outskirts on Thursday, All Souls Day.
Almost 8,000 US soldiers killed in the Sicily, Salerno and
Anzio landings are buried at Nettuno, as well as American Red
Cross nurses killed during the Italian campaign.
The Ardeatine Caves are the site of Rome's worst WWII German
atrocity, the 1944 reprisal killings of 335 Italian men and boys
after a partisan attack that killed 33 South Tyrolean SS
military police in central Rome.
At Nettuno the pope visited the tombs including an unknown
soldier, an Italo-American and a Jew before saying Mass.
He was greeted by the cemetery's director Melanie Resto and
the mayors of Nettuno and Anzio, respectively Angelo Casto and
Luciano Bruschini.
At the cemetery Mass, the pontiff railed against the futility
of war and cited Pope Benedict XV who vainly tried to stop World
War One.
Francis appealed for the end of all war.
"Please Lord, not more war, not more of these pointless
slaughters, as Benedict XV would have said.
"Better to hope without destruction, thousands and thousands
of young people, broken hopes, no more Lord, and we must say
this today in this place in a special way for these young
people, today when the world is again at war and is preparing to
go to war again.
"No more Lord, no more, everyone loses with war".
At the Ardatine Caves later the pope stood in silent prayer
for four minutes and then laid wreath of white roses at some
tombs before walking silently alone along the corridors that
separate them.
He was greeted by, among others, Rome Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di
Segni.
There were 75 Jews among the 335 killed in the quarry on
March 24, 1944.
In the Book of Honour of the Ardeatine Caves Shrine the pope
wrote: "these are the fruits of war: hatred, death,
vendetta...Forgive us, Lord".
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