It is no accident that many films shown on television between Memorial Day and D-Day the following week (June 6) center around World War II. After all, with more than 16 million men and women under arms, it was easily the largest and deadliest war ever fought by the United States. Only a tiny percent of them are still alive, and only one of them is a Catholic bishop. That is Bishop Louis A. DeSimone, 95, a retired auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia.

Back in 1944 he was Sgt. Louis DeSimone, a 22-year-old translator of Italian attached to the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Army. Joining it in Casablanca during the African campaign and continuing through Sicily, up the Italian boot to Monte Cassino and after that to the deadly Anzio beach landing, he arrived in Rome a few days after the bloodless liberation of the Italian capital.