Nazi troops killed 28 Resistance-linked Catholic priests and friars in the province of Lucca in the summer of 1944, the biggest massacre of religious in the Second World War, a new study said Wednesday.
    The priests were killed for various reasons, said the study by local historians: for sheltering in churches and convents harmless peasants, wandering soldiers, Jews, people refusing to be enrolled in the Nazi puppet Republic of Salò forces, partisans, and even ex fascists.
    The murders were carried out by an SS Panzer division that was also guilty of the second worst Nazi atrocity in WWII, in the Tuscan village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema, when 560 unarmed people including 130 children were murdered.
    photo: children playing a few days before Stazzema massacre
   

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