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Rome's headache: How to bury a Nazi war criminal

AP/NZ Herald

What to do with the body of a Naziwar criminal no one wants?

Rome's mayor, police chief and the pope's right-hand man have att refused to grant

former SS captain Erich Priebke a church funeral in the city where he participated in

one of the worst massacres in German-occupied ltaly. Now there's the added

question of where to bury him, since Rome, his adopted homeland of Argentina, and

his hometown in Germany won't take him. Priebke spent nearly 50 years as a fugitive

before being extradited to ltaly from Argentina in 1995 to stand trial for the 1944

massacre at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome, in which 335 civilians were killed.

He died Fiiday at age 100 in the Rome home of his lawyer, Paolo Giachini, where he

had been serving his life term under house arrest.

His death has raised a torrent of emotions over how best to lay to rest someone who

perpetrated war crimes and denied the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. !t has

tested the church's capacity for mercy and forgiveness and its need to prevent public

scandal. There is a seemingly intractable conflict between respect for the dead and

that owed to the millions of victims of the Holocaust. Rome's archdiocese said

Monday it had told Giachinito have the funeral at home "in strict privacy" and that

Pope Francis'vicar for Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, had prohibited any Rome

church from celebrating it.

But Giachini refused, pressing instead for a private church Mass. The archdiocese

responded by reminding atl Roman priests that they must abide by Vallini's decision.

Separately, Rome's police chief and the government prefect for the capital

announced they would prohibit "any form of solemn or public celebration" for Priebke

because of public security concerns. Rome Mayor lgnazio Marino said the city would

accept neither a church funeral nor a burial for him. lt was a rebuke by both church