A Sound of Sheer Silence

Lost in the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II the Sunday before last was the beatification of Father Giuseppe Girotti, OP .  Beatification is the last step on the road that leads to canonization, so you could say that Fr. Girotti is "almost" a saint. Girotti was an Italian Dominican priest and Scripture scholar.  In the 1930s, he studied at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, with a focus on the Prophets.  Whether it was because of his time in Israel, or because of his love for the Old Testament, or his inherent goodness and sense of justice, during World War II he was actively involved in organizing an "underground railroad" of safe houses and escape routes in northern Italy for Jews fleeing the Holocaust.  In 1944, he was caught by the Gestapo helping a wounded Jewish man, and was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau.  On April 1, 1945, Easter Sunday and just weeks before the U.S. Army liberated Dachau, he was killed by the Nazis when they inje...