In this video, a mob attacks the priest Don Curzio Nitoglio, mistaking him for the celebrant of Priebke’s funeral mass.

DON VINCENZO writes:

Few will dispute the fact that the recent death of Erich Priebke was no great loss to anyone outside his immediate family. Indeed, to many Italians who gathered at the site of his interment, Priebke was a symbol of death, for he had been involved in the death of hundreds of Italians in the Andeatine Caves outside of Rome where, in retaliation for an attack on German troops in Rome in 1944, Hitler ordered the execution of ten Romans for every one Nazi soldier killed in the assault. Much of this is explained in Robert Katz’s account, Death in Rome, which later became a movie starring Richard Burton. (I have seen the plaque at that square in Rome that describes this event.)

All of this is well known in Italy, for the men and women who gathered at the funeral interment knew all about Captain Eric Priebke of the Nazi S.S. The funeral drew not only media attention, but also attracted an understandable fierce resistance by those whose family members had been murdered in those caves north of Rome. It should also be pointed out that Katz drew a clear line between the executions of 335 Italians, 70 of whom were Italian Jews, and the unwillingness of the then Pope Pius XII to try to stop the murders, for which Katz was sued for libel by Pope Pacelli’s family, but later acquitted by the highest Italian court.

But more to the point is the recent interview (in English here) with an Italian priest, the Rev. Pierpaolo Petrucci, who shed some further light on Priebke, who, after fleeing Germany, fled to Argentina, where he was arrested and extradited back to Italy for trial. In 1996, Priebke  was sentenced to life in prison, but not before he would read a letter in which he expressed his deep regret to those families who had lost loved ones.

Beginning in 2002,  Fr. Petrucci claims that Priebke, who was born Protestant, sought conversion into the Catholic Church and expressed further sorrow and regret for what he had done during World War II, all of which clearly indicated that Priebke had repented for his participation in the Ardeatine Cave massacre and sought reconciliation of his error with God.  But that was not enough to please the Roman Vicariate (the papal governing body of all churches within Rome), for as Fr. Petrucci noted: The vicariate’s refusal to grant a funeral to a baptized person who received the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist — whatever his crimes and sins may have been — is not in keeping with Church law and Catholic doctrine.

One can understand the reaction of family members at the interment which included a banner which claimed, “The Eternal Father  may have forgiven you but we don’t,” but why would the Vatican be reluctant to grant Priebke the right to be buried as a Catholic?

Perhaps the answer to that question lies in the sea change that has overwhelmed the Church since Vatican II. The willingness to allow political and/or ecumenical considerations to trump traditional Catholic doctrine is now overwhelmingly apparent. Said Fr. Petrucci: Changes that then give rise to behaviors that are contrary to Catholic teaching, such as denying a funeral to a baptized person who dies reconciled with God, in order to conform to political correctness.

I have no love for the recently departed Capt. Priebke, and no one will deny that his crime was horrendous, but the Church has always taught that the quality of mercy is not strained. Still, I see no end to situations similar to the Priebke internment in which the Church of all time sees itself as conditioning its response to any situation by the prevailing winds of modernism.

— Comments —

Laura writes:

Notorious, unrepentant sinners are not entitled to a Catholic funeral. There are sufficient grounds to believe Priebke was repentant. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Christian funeral is. The atheist memorial service is a “celebration” of a person’s life. The Christian funeral is a solemn occasion in which the possibility of eternal condemnation is acknowledged. Someone known to have been unrepentant of serious sins is not entitled to this rite.

The blogger Eponymous Flower wrote about the funeral:

The ugly face of hatred was extremely visible during the death and burial of Erich Priebke. Revenge and hatred to be driven as far as to deny the enemy a grave, does not honor the victims of the enemy. Especially when it has nothing to do with justice.

The pictures with kicks and punches against the coffin containing the Pribke’s (sic) body, which was spat on, are just plain disgusting. They show the grimace of a world without mercy and forgiveness, a world without Christ and without Christianity. That this ugly face appeared around one of the most important Christian acts, a funeral, therefore, seems to be a coincidence. Before the parade of right-wing groups that could exploit Priebke’s funeral, perhaps, they wanted to preserve “the memory of the victims, the families of the victims” and anti-fascist society. What came instead were violent left-wing extremists and the eternal mob that longs to this day after crucifixion.

As a commenter noted, Ted Kennedy, a major supporter of abortion rights, never publicly repented of his public sins and yet he was granted a full Catholic funeral, at which the Archbishop of Boston presided. Did the Communist sympathizer Giorgi0 La Pira repent of his support of the Soviet government?

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