CAREFULLY PLANNED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 November 1943, Page 3

CAREFULLY PLANNED

BOMBING OF THE VATICAN

SWISS PAPER’S REPORT.

CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE DONE.

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, November 8.

“The damage is very considerable, says the Rome correspondent of the Swiss newspaper the “Gazette de Lausanne,” after an inspection of the bombed sections of the Vatican, which are mostly inaccessible to the public. He adds: “Most of the damage was caused in new quarters which were constructed within the Vatican gardens after the Lateran Treaty in 1929, and which therefore are without historic value. The reported facts strongly support the view that .the attack was planned by people intimately acquainted with the Vatican buildings and the present habits of the occupants. Had the bombs been aimed less accurately the damage to the sacred shrines and cultural treasures which are in very close vicinity must have been grave, and if the attack had been made at an earlier hour the loss of life might have been considerable.

“Obviously, the object of the single low-flying plane was to bomb with the minimum material damage, but in the closest proximity to objects of priceless worth.”

The German controlled Scandinavian Telegraph Bureau states that the Cardinal Archbishop of Poland, Monsignor August Hlond, was severely injured by a bomb splinter’ in the raid. The German news agency, quoting Vatican quarters, asserted: “An examination of the splinters of bombs dropped in the Vatican City has proved that they were British small calibre bombs. The examination was carried out by the Vatican director of technical services, Signor Galfazzi, and two Rome artillery experts.”