Giovanni Palatucci
police official from Italy (1909-1945)
The Vatican record
- 23 March 2023 — Heroic virtue declared — title Venerable (decree list, 2023)
Who they were
Giovanni Palatucci (31 May 1909 – 10 February 1945) was an Italian police official who was long believed to have saved thousands of Jews in Fiume between 1939 and 1944 (current Rijeka in Croatia) from being deported to Nazi extermination camps. In 2013 a research panel of historians led by the Centro Primo Levi reviewed almost 700 documents and concluded that Palatucci had followed Italian Social Republic and German orders concerning the Jews and enabling the deportation of the majority of the 570 Jews living in Fiume and surrounding areas, 412 of whom were deported to Auschwitz, a higher percentage than in any Italian city. The matter is currently the topic of scholarly debate.
Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), until this page is written up in full.
The miracles
The Church has declared this person’s heroic virtue, which is what the title Venerable means. One approved miracle is needed before beatification.
Why that counted as sanctity
Limited information available on this saint.
- Dicastery for the Causes of Saints — promulgated decrees (causesanti.va), summarised in our own words
- Wikidata Q737740 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Giovanni Palatucci (CC BY-SA)
Not yet written up in full. The dates and the step marked “Vatican record” come from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints; the rest comes from Wikidata and is not yet checked.