Elia Dalla Costa

Elia Dalla Costa was born on 14 May 1872 in Villaverla, in the province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of northern Italy, then part of the Kingdom of Italy. He was educated in the diocesan seminary of Vicenza and ordained a priest for that diocese on 25 July 1895. After parish assignments he taught in the seminary and later served as its rector, forming clergy for Vicenza. His reputation for piety, administrative skill, and pastoral care led Pope Pius XI to appoint him Bishop of Padua in 1923. He was consecrated on 12 August 1923 and spent eight years visiting parishes, promoting Catholic Action, and attending to social needs in a largely agricultural diocese.

On 19 December 1931 he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Florence. In the consistory of 13 March 1933 Pius XI created him Cardinal-Priest of San Marco. As archbishop through the 1930s he sought to defend the Church's independence under Fascism and to sustain Catholic education and charities. When Italy enacted racial laws in 1938 he was among the Italian bishops who opposed the persecution of Jews.

After the armistice of September 1943 and the German occupation of Florence, Dalla Costa organized a large rescue network. He instructed clergy and religious to hide Jews, escaped Allied prisoners, and anti-Fascist activists in convents, monasteries, rectories, and private homes, and false baptismal certificates and identity papers were prepared under his authority. The effort, involving priests, sisters, and lay collaborators, is credited with saving hundreds of people. Yad Vashem later named him Righteous Among the Nations. Contemporaries knew him as the Cardinal of Charity.

He took part in the conclave of 1939 that elected Pius XII and the conclave of 1958 that elected John XXIII. He remained Archbishop of Florence in the postwar years, supporting reconstruction and remaining a central figure in Florentine Catholicism. He died in Florence on 22 December 1961 at the age of eighty-nine and was buried in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. A cause for beatification was introduced; in 2017 Pope Francis recognized his heroic virtues and declared him Venerable.