Records found in history books are a combination of facts and happenings. One can say that these occurrences changed and shaped the story of people’s lives. In fact, there are moments in a human life in which the spirit of solidarity and altruism, almost miraculously and regardless of the risk, can accomplish astonishing feats and bring about positive change in the fate of other people.

Very often, though, scraps and snippets of enigmatic stories that authenticate the greater picture have not yet been recorded. There are multitudes of people who remain out of the limelight and yet play an important role in the bigger plot of things. Such is the story of Brother Robert of Mary, formerly Luigi Pace, a Maltese member of the brothers of the Christian schools.

Apart from the general vocation members of this congregation all embrace, Bro. Robert possessed a special one: it was a personal mission to undertake a rare but essential work for God.

He led an active, very often fearless life, a sort of apprenticeship to what he would face in the future. In the dramatic moments of the German occupation of Italy, he managed to face in a heroic way the major obstacles of that terrible moment in history during which the fate of humanity was at stake.

He answered the moral challenge of those dangerous times with a Christian spirit and with a great sense of humanity. One need only follow the geographical movements that marked the stages of his life to get an idea of its adventurous nature and frequent twists.

He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on December 2, 1907, son of Robert and Eleonor. His father worked as a British subject for an international oil company. This accounts for the family being stationed at Alexandria and for their transfer to Perth, Australia, soon thereafter, where he attended primary school.

Most of Pace’s secondary education, however, was received back in the family’s native Malta where, for a year, he attended Stella Maris, the Lasallian college in Sliema. He then matriculated at the Malta lyceum where, in addition to the usual academic subjects, he also mastered shorthand. In 1926 he graduated from the lyceum and passed the Oxford University local examinations with distinction.

With support from his devoutly Christian parents, he chose to follow the life of the brothers of the Christian schools. He attended the novitiate at Pont d’Inca on the island of Majorca, since at that time, the Christian brothers’ schools in Malta administratively belonged to the district of Algeria. So it happened that it was in a Spanish milieu that Bro. Robert began his initial training as a Christian brother, where he affirmed his attachment to the life that God willed for him.

His first assignment was at Stella Maris College, which he had attended as a pupil. Later on, his superiors sent him to Italy were Bro. Robert continued his work as a teacher at the Collegio Arcangelo, Fano (1932), at San Giuseppe, Rome (1933), at La Salle of Benevento (1934), at La Salle of Naples (1938) and at St Joseph in Nantes, France (1939).

Since the time he was in Naples he had begun to hear the first rumours of an imminent war. With the outbreak of World War II hostilities, he, being a British subject, was immediately put in a delicate if not precarious position. So for safety reasons, he was advised to take refuge in Rome, at the brothers’ casa generalizia.

In 1940, Bro. Robert, just arrived in the community of the motherhouse, was assigned, along with four other polyglot brothers of different nationalities, to the Secretariat of State of the Vatican with the task of procuring, sorting, filing and storing all documentation regarding missing or prisoner soldiers.

Bro. Robert was appointed interlocutor at the office of a then young and intrepid Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI) who, as under-secretary to Pope Pius XII for external affairs, was also charged with running a network of safe houses both for Jews and downed RAF pilots in Rome.

A full account of these events can be found in the correspondence and memoirs of Bro. Robert. What is of great significance is the assertion that he not only worked for Montini, but that he also gave him orders related to the safekeeping of Jews and allied pilots.

Bro. Robert contributed to the liberation of more than 50 prisoners, but he helped more than a thousand with the secret organisation he founded and which operated in Rome

In an unpublished 1949 manuscript entitled ‘The Beginning of the Adventures of Brother Robert of Mary during the German Occupation of Rome’, Bro. Robert relates how, while crossing streets in Rome, Jewish women who knew of his work would approached him and plead: “Father, please hide us from the Nazis who will put us on trucks and take us to Germany to make soap out of us”. He managed to save many such people by finding charitable Italian families to hide these persecuted brethren.

He did so under the direction of Montini who, in turn, reported all activities of this nature to the Pope for final direction and approval. In addition, Bro. Robert testifies that he also worked closely with the heads of three other networks doing similar tasks: Mgr Hugh O’Flaherty, Sir d’Arcy Osbourne, the British ambassador at the Vatican and Lt Col Sam Derry of the British Army Corps.

Bro. Robert was fluent in nine languages, a true polyglot and cosmopolitan, thanks to his open-mindedness and his frequent travels, which took him to all five continents. Due to this, he was assigned to the Vatican Radio to transmit the messages of the prisoners of war to their families.

This service was intended to “provide for families some information on their fate, since the deprivation of news about their loved ones throws them in an unspeakable anguish”. For four years, to all those who listened to the broadcast lists of British prisoner soldiers, the warm and reassuring voice of Bro. Robert soon became very familiar.

To the British newspaper, The Catholic Times, in a long postcard smuggled out of Italy and posted in Spain, it was specified that Bro. Robert, despite leaving the radio service, continued to work with and for the prisoners; in fact, he went on to play a more direct role, which aimed to promote the liberation of concentration camps in Italy, housing British and American prisoners, whose names had until then been disseminated through radio. Many of them were in hiding, and were waiting for the advance of the Allies, while others were trying to reach the Allied forces which had landed in Italy.

Perhaps the most fateful of all his friendships was that with O’Flaherty, a member of the diplomatic corps in the Vatican. Known by many as “the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican”, having an even wider circle of contacts and friends in Rome than Bro. Robert, he managed to perform many services for the Allied cause.

During this time of the German occupation of Rome, Bro. Robert personally contributed to the liberation of more than 50 prisoners, but he helped more than a thousand with the secret organisation he founded and which operated in Rome. Not only did he plan their escape, but also provided them with food and a place to hide until he knew that they were safe. He did this with heart and soul as being his part in the struggle against Nazism.

Dennis Murray Walters, for example, who as a boy worked actively with the Partisans and the Allied troops, found refuge and safety at the Collegio San Giuseppe – Istituto De Merode of Rome - through the mediation of Bro. Robert. In his memoirs Not Always With the Pack (London, 1989) Walters recalls his rescuer as “a big man who spoke perfect English and fluent Italian with a slight British accent... and had organised a network of assistance to allied prisoners”.

The organisation of Bro. Robert was also made up of three Augustinian Maltese priests: Fr Egidio Galea, Fr Aurelio Borg and Fr Ugolino Gatt. Another person who contributed significantly to the operation was Henrietta Chevalier, the Malta-born widowed mother of six who found herself trapped in Rome when Benito Mussolini declared war in 1940. All organisation members held codenames.

With the help of Sr Josephine, a Sister of Charity, and the cooperation of a surgeon, Bro. Robert hid in a hospital an entire group of wounded prisoners, preventing them from being deported to Germany. Being unable to walk, they were cared for by the nun and, thanks to the efforts of Bro. Robert and his organisation, were eventually rescued by the Red Cross.

The great persuasiveness of Bro. Robert, whose codename was ‘Whitebows’ (since he always went around Rome in his robe and distinctive rabat), allowed him to find families willing to host his refugees. The risks were terrible: those who hosted an escaped convict, if discovered by OVRA7 or by the Gestapo, would be immediately shot dead. Yet, several families accepted to take the risk, testimony to the extraordinary heroism of ordinary people.

The adventures that can be narrated are countless, and many were the prisoners and escapees saved. One day, Bro. Robert was asked to find shelter for British Major General Michael Denman Gambier-Parry (1891-1976) who had escaped arrest. Bro. Robert turned to Chevalier, knowing that in her house in Via Ruggero Bonghi, she had a special secret room on the fourth floor, with a walled-up door.

The general in question, thanks to the effective intercession of Bro. Robert, was welcomed in that place, where he stayed until he was transferred to a hospital. The Germans made several checks at her house but they never found any prisoners. Thanks to the efforts of Bro. Robert, another officer in trouble was hosted in the house in Viale Liege of Italian writer and journalist Guido Piovene and his partner, the journalist Flora Volpini.

Bro. Robert became a celebrity in Rome. Thanks to his perfect Italian, he was never suspected of being English. By means of his cunning and various ruses, he always managed to wriggle out even under the most difficult and dangerous situations.

Nonetheless, on March 16, 1944, the unexpected happened. He was told that two Allied runaway prisoners were hiding in a place on the outskirts of Rome. Bro. Robert and two Italian friends went on the spot, but when the rescuers arrived there and offered their hand in a sign of greeting, they were confronted by two people who pulled out their guns and ordered them to raise their hands. They were Gestapo agents!

Thanks to his perfect Italian, he was never suspected of being English. By means of his cunning and various ruses, he always managed to wriggle out even under the most difficult and dangerous situations

Someone had laid a trap for the three. The situation was extreme­ly delicate, because the Bro. Robert had in his bag some compromising material – a code book which listed the names of Jews hidden throughout Rome.

At gunpoint they were led through the streets of Rome and taken to the Gestapo headquarters in Via Tasso, where the interrogation of prisoners took place. It was a place more dreaded than even the worst of Rome’s notorious prison, as it was the undisputed centre of the fine art of torture by the notorious Koch gang. Bro. Robert, who knew the cruelties for which Peter Koch was capable of, thought he had reached the end.

However, separated from the other two prisoners, he was loaded onto a truck and taken to another office in Corso Italia. On the way, he tried to snatch his diary, but was spotted as he dropped a sheet. At that point, to divert the attention of the guards, the other prisoners who were in the truck staged a racket, so there were no consequences. Shortly after, Bro. Robert began to tear the pages under his cassock, swallowing them one by one, lest any Jews be arrested due to his own apprehension by the SS.

After being questioned for several hours by a Gestapo officer, he was now convinced that this time he would not get away with it. Nonetheless, he defended his version of events, declaring that he had received a request from a village priest to drive two people to an address in Rome, and had naturally agreed to render this small service to a brother in the Church.

He also pointed out that he was well known by German officers in Rome. In fact, Bro. Robert spent most of his time at the motherhouse which had been abruptly turned from an Italian military hospital into a German one. Bro. Robert was very much in demand by the hospitalised German officers and soldiers. At the hospital, he provided them with little gifts with the same unselfish generosity he had shown to Allied prisoners.

At the hospital, Bro. Robert also regularly held Catechism lessons for soldiers in a room under the chapter house, from where, by means of a microphone, they were spread to all departments of the hospital for the maimed and bedridden. He also held some lessons in the San Carlo clinic of the Sisters of the Christian Doctrine of Nancy on Via Aurelia, where over 100 wounded soldiers were kept.

Though not convinced of Bro. Robert’s innocence, the Gestapo agents allowed him to return to the community, but with the ominous promise that they would call him for a more in-depth questioning.

The two Italians – Andrea Casadei (a 21-year-old carpenter) and Vittorio Fantini (a 25-year-old pharmacist) – who had accompanied Bro. Robert to the site, were detained in Regina Coeli and, eight days later, on March 24, 1944, shot in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre near the catacombs. Their names form part of a list of 335 martyrs.

After this dark event, the friends of the organisation and the superiors at the motherhouse realised that things were going badly for Bro. Robert and that it was high time for him to ‘disappear’, by finding refuge in the Vatican. And so it was that for the next few months, until the liberation of Rome by the Allies, Bro. Robert became a per­manent resident in the Vatican.

At the end of the war, in April 1945, in England, in recognition of his heroic acts, Bro. Robert was created a member of the Order of the British Empire by King George VI himself. In March of the same year, recognition of his war services came in the form of an additional distinction. In Rome, Bro. Robert was awarded the title of Knight Commander in the Maltese Order of St George of Carinthia.

Bro. Robert stayed at the brothers’ motherhouse till 1947. Then, he began his career as a ‘missionary’. In September 1947, he went to Jerusalem, in the community of the Collège des Frères, on the eve of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory. In 1948 he was in Lebanon; in 1950 again in Rome; in 1951 in Philadelphia; in 1953 in California at St Mary’s College in Moraga and at the Sacred Heart in San Francisco; in 1956 at Mont La Salle in Napa; in 1961 in the provincial’s residence of the Rheem Valley; in 1966 in Illinois and in 1967 at the De La Salle College in Washington, DC.

In a way that seems cruel by secular standards, his valuable career was cut short just when it seemed to be making its most significant contribution. Bro. Robert was paralysed by a stroke in late 1968, at a time when he was doing maximum service at the Brothers’ national mission office in Washington DC, and occupying a key liaison post where his special talents were of inestimable value to the office and to the Catholic bishops of the US. This ‘cerebral vascular accident’, as he used to refer to it, completely curtailed his activities in the last months of his life.

He tried hard to keep up his morale and did so to an edifying extent. Unfortunately, the onset of cardiac symptoms complicated the situation. A heart operation with a 55 per cent chance of success was offered Bro. Robert and he agreed to it. By the time it was scheduled, he was very weak. He died in the post-operative Intensive Care Unit at Stanford University Hospital, California, on December 3, 1970, a day after his 63rd birthday, in the 43rd year of his religious life. His death was difficult and painful, but courageous and Christian. He was buried on December 7 at Mont La Salle cemetery.

Bro Robert, a war hero of the resistance, earned his fame due to his engaging and ebullient personality, and above all, to his firm dedication to Christian ideals. His hope and Christian optimism, fruit of the love he had for Jesus Christ and his divine mother, kept Bro. Robert in fidelity and led him to persevere in the face of the most daunting circumstances. As a courageous and dedicated Brother to the end, he lives on in fond memories all over the world.