I'm a practicing Catholic and I'm proud to be Jewish

Newly discovered Vatican documents reveal the desperate plight of Italian Jewish families during the Fascist era, including the family of prominent American lawyer Guido Calabresi.

The Jewish cemetery in Ferrara, Italy, is a sad place nestled against the walls of the medieval city. Its 800 tombstones are clustered among overgrown grass, fallen leaves and brooding trees. The impressive grounds testify to the fact that before World War II there was a large, teeming Jewish community here, now reduced to a few dozen people. From time to time, visitors come to photograph the modern tombstone of Giorgio Bassani, author of the novel The Garden of Finzi-Contini, which begins with a description of the family's''place of death (1988) - curiously, New Haven, Conn. The tombstone had another unusual feature. At the bottom, under the inscription about Massimo, were the words in Italian: 'In memory of his wife Bianca Maria Finzi Contini, buried in New Haven, USA'. For some reason, Bianca's remains did not join Massimo in Ferrara.

The name Calabresi caught my eye: it reminded me of the distinguished American lawyer Guido Calabresi. I had never met him, but I knew he had been dean of Yale Law School before being appointed a federal judge by his former student President Bill Clinton. I also knew that he was born into an Italian Jewish family and emigrated to America when he was a child when Italy imposed anti-Semitic'''racial'' laws, and war broke out in Europe. And something else I heard: despite his Jewish background, he was a devout Catholic.

Based on the last name and the reference to New Haven, the headstone in Ferrara seemed to have a connection to an American professor and judge. Which got me thinking: how did the family manage to get out of Italy? And why was Massimo the only one to return?

It's a coincidence, but shortly after my visit to the Jewish Cemetery, a friend sent me an email saying he had mentioned my book, "The Pope During the War," to his old law school professor, 90-year-old Guido Calabresi, who still lives near New Haven. I decided to dig deeper into the Vatican archives to see if there was any information about the Calabresi family in them. And it''was there.

I was one of the first scholars to be granted access to the Vatican archives of the papacy of Pius XII, the controversial war-era pope, when they were finally opened in 2020. Among the mountain of documents that became available for the first time was what Vatican archivists call the "Series on the Jews" - tens of thousands of pages describing the desperate attempts of Jews in Italy to escape persecution by appealing to the pope or the Vatican secretary of state for some kind of help. Most of the appeals came from Jews who had converted to Catholicism, many of them very recently, and hoped that the Holy See could exert some influence in their favor.

Investigating the 'Series on the Jews' in the Vatican archives is an unsettling and exhausting experience; following''Every trail is a never-ending endeavor. I first focused on the Calabresi family because of the connection - seeing the tombstone; recognizing the name - but their story is only one of many. The Vatican archives hold files on more than 2,700 Jewish families before and during the war. The stories vary widely, but they share a common thread: when all doors closed, all the families sought help from the Vatican - in many cases to no avail.

In the summer of 1938, the Fascist government announced its new racial policy, identifying the majority of Italy's Catholic population as Aryan and the country's tiny Jewish minority as a different race. The announcement came as a profound shock to Italian Jews. It was followed by a series of draconian''anti-Semitic measures: Jewish students could no longer attend public schools and universities.

Many Italian Jews sought escape from conditions that they''feared, would only get worse. Some tried to leave the country. Others found a ray of hope in a legal loophole: if they could show that they were not really Jews but Catholics, they could effectively change race.

New racial laws determined who was considered Jewish and who was not. Those with one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent could be considered members of the Aryan race if they "belonged to a religion other than Jewish" before October 1, 1938. Additional guidelines added the proviso that to be recognized as Aryan descendants of such mixed marriages, they did not have to show any signs of attachment to Judaism after baptism, such as having married a Jew.

The threat of the coming October 1 - announced only in''November - sparked a feverish search for cooperation from priests who could provide back-date baptisms. Soon the Vatican found itself facing a wave of requests from newly converted Jews to Catholicism, many of whom approached the pope himself, based on the hope that the Holy See might exert some influence in their favor. This paperwork, including hundreds of baptisms, forms the main part of the "Series on the Jews".

Oboth of Judge Calabresi's parents came from prominent and wealthy Italian Jewish families. Guido's father, Massimo, was born in Ferrara when the Jewish community in the city numbered about 1,300. He was a prominent cardiologist. Massimo's father, Ettore, was a major industrialist and a determined anti-fascist, and''Massimo was also an active anti-fascist. Guido's mother, Bianca Finzi-Contini, was born inMilan; at the time of her father's marriage, Armando Finzi Contini was one of Bologna's wealthiest citizens. After Bianca and Massimo married in 1929, the family moved to Milan's fashionable neighborhood, where Massimo obtained a position on the faculty of the university and in one of the city's largest hospitals. Guido was born in Milan in 1932, two years after his brother Paolo.

Neither the Calabresi family nor the Finzi-Contini family were very religious, but they were both proud of their Italian Jewish ancestry and were closely connected to the Jewish family network. After the publication of the racial laws, Massimo was fired from his faculty and hospital position.

When Benito Mussolini was preparing''the ground for his racial campaign, he ordered a census of Italian Jews. In August 1938, Massimo Calabresi filled out an official form, dutifully listing himself, his wife and two sons as Jews. But as the implications of the new laws became clear, Massimo decided to explore his options. First, he decided to look for work outside of Italy so that in the event of an intolerable situation, he could try to leave p