Italian television recently broadcast a heartrending documentary about one of the largest single acts of mass Christian martyrdom in the 20th century. This happened in 1937 when soldiers and militias slaughtered some 300 Ethiopian monks at one of the country’s holiest religious houses. In this instance, the perpetrators were neither communists nor Islamists but Catholic Italians, serving the fascist regime of Benito MusÂsolini. That massacre at Debre Libanos was one inÂstance in a larger campaign of several years’ duration in which EthiÂoÂpian monasteries and churches were systematically bombed and subjected to mustard gas attacks. Outside Ethiopia, the persecutions remain largely unknown.
In popular memory, fascist Italy has always been regarded as a less pernicious member of the Axis powers, but in his colonial policies Mussolini yielded nothing to Hitler. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, and in the words of its local commander, Rodolfo Graziani, “the Duce will have Ethiopia, with or without the Ethiopians.”
The savage Italian campaign ultimately killed several hundred thousand EthioÂpians””some sources say a million. Graziani envisaged the extermination of all local chiefs and elites, much as Hitler would later attempt in Poland. Given the profound identification of the EthiopiÂan church with national spirit, Italian forces particularly targeted religious establishments….
A global church must have a global memory. Let’s never forget Debre Libanos.
Read it all (this appeared in the Christian Century print edition of January 18, 2017 on page 45).
Monastery of Debre Libanos in #Eritrea. Many amazing places to see in Eritrea. #ComeAndSee (credit-Hagerawi Dihnet). pic.twitter.com/yHMxqbImIA
— EPLF (@DahlaKib) December 28, 2016
