'Nothing was done to stop it' New questions over Vatican's role in Cassino catastrophe

The mountaintop monastery have been a place of safety as one of the longest and deadliest battles of the second world war was fought around it.

- Angela Giuffrida

But on 15 February 1944, about 250 of an estimated 1,000 civilians who had fled to it from the town of Cassino and nearby villages were killed when Allied forces bombed the building, believing - wrongly that German troops were inside or using it as an observation post.

The incident during the Battle of Monte Cassino, which was fought during the Allied advance to Rome, is one of the most hotly debated episodes of the war. It led the investigative journalist Nando Tasciotti into the Vatican's Pope Pius XII archives, where he discovered a document he said confirmed Adolf Hitler's role in the chain of events that led to the attack, while revealing the Holy See's admission that the bombing raid might have been avoided had it taken firm action to enforce a neutral zone around the monastery.