Gennaro Verolino

Growing up in Acerra, his mother's birthplace, he studied at the seminary there and then at the Jesuit theological faculty in Naples.

He was soon invited to Rome to study at the Apollinare, graduating in utroque iure and taking up a diplomatic career in the service of the Holy See.

At risk to his own life and with the support of Rotta and the consent of Pope Pius XII, Verolino saved over 30,000 Jews from the Holocaust[1] by putting them under his diplomatic protection and supplying them with fake passports.

[4] He was appointed titular archbishop of Corinth and Apostolic Nuncio to both El Salvador and Guatemala on 5 September 1951 by Pius XII.

On 25 February 1957 he was named Apostolic Nuncio to Costa Rica[6] and on 2 March 1963 Secretary of the Sacred Ceremonial Congregation until its suppression in 1967 during Pope Paul VI's reform of the Roman Curia.