The story of Sister Maria Goglia and the sisters of the Compassionist Sisters Servants of Mary in Rome, of whom she was the vicar, was a story of civil commitment to help the many people who, especially after the events of September 8, 1943, were persecuted by Nazi-fascism. In fact, their commitment took place in Rome between September 1943 and June 1944; in those months, Rome had the status of "Città Aperta", i.e. a place that the belligerent forces of the Second World War pledged to keep out of the fighting in order to preserve its immense historical and cultural heritage. However, this did not spare the city from terrible months of occupation by German forces, which saw their dramatic climax in the rounding up of the Jewish ghetto in October 1943. The Nazi forces, with the collaboration of their fascist allies, arrested 1256 people on that occasion, including 207 boys and girls. More than a thousand were deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp and only 16 of them returned to Italy.
Even before the rounding up of Roman Jews, the Nazi-Fascists focused on Italian soldiers who refused to take the oath to Mussolini following the dissolution of the Royal Italian Army. Sister Maria Goglia, with the help of her sisters, therefore began to provide hospitality to dozens of displaced Italian soldiers, from simple soldiers to high-ranking military personnel. After the round-up, the sisters' activities also focused on Jews who had escaped the Nazis and were in urgent need of protection.
More than sixty Jews, mostly women, found safety in the institute in Via Torlonia (where the Compassionist Sisters Servants of Mary still have their home nowadays). The sisters used various strategies to help the Jews: from offering hospitality to giving religious clothing to Jewish women so that they could pretend to be nuns. The collaboration with DELASEM, which stands for Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants, was also very important. This Jewish resistance organisation was responsible for helping Italian Jews escape Nazi-Fascist persecution, by distributing financial aid and providing them with documents in order to help them to avoid identification by the occupying troops. Sister Maria Goglia, who was in her early thirties at the time, procured not only forged identity cards for her clients, but also certificates of membership to the Catholic religion, in order to prove their non-belonging to the Jewish ''race'.
After the end of the war, Sister Maria Goglia was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour on the field. Her story has been told in the book Suor Maria Goglia. Elmetto e Soggòlo, written by Fra Davide Fernando Panella for Edizioni Realtà Sannita in 2022.
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