Eugenio Zolli’s Path to Rome

by Stephen Sparrow

It’s little wonder that biographer Judith Cabaud considers Eugenio Zolli one of the most remarkable men of the twentieth century.

Born in 1881 in Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Zolli's baby boy was given the first name Israel. Sixty years later he was chief Rabbi of Rome. In 1944, while in the synagogue celebrating Yom Kippur, Zolli experienced a mystical vision of Jesus Christ. Within a year he was baptized a Catholic at which time he changed his first name from Israel to Eugenio, the same Christian name as Pope Pius XII. He did this to honor the Pope for the help he gave Jews trying to escape the Nazi's extermination program during World War II...

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