According to the prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, the documents from Pope Pius XII's pontificate might be catalogued and ready for researchers in five years, the Zenit website reports.
There are some 16 million documents from the 1939-1958 pontificate. They have generated interest due to the polemics surrounding Pius XII's aid to Jews during the Nazi era.
Bishop Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, gave the projected date for catalogue completion in a speech on March 1, 2010.
Bishop Pagano said, "When Pius XII's pontificate is opened, nothing mysterious or surprising is expected. What will be seen is the great good that Pius XII did in relation to the Jews."
Today, many Jews still believe that Pius XII was not as forceful as he should have been in opposing Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany's genocide policy during World War II. Some six million innocent Jews were murdered under Hitler's Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
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And of course, one must ask the question of why the Vatican has not done this before. After all, the war ended in 1945 so it’s not that they did not have time to catalog those documents. Even if the Vatican did not want to do it while Pope Pius XII was alive, they could have catalogued the documents from 1958 onwards. The fact that they need another five years is inexcusable given the effect of the play “The Deputy” in the '60s, which prompted the Vatican release of 11 volumes of documents. One must assume these must have been the best documents the Vatican had to show Pope Pius’ work in defense of the Jews during the Holocaust so it’s unlikely the opening to the rest of the files will make Pope Pius look any better.
ReplyDeleteGabriel Wilensky
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