Catholic Church history will be brought into the light when approximately two million secret documents from World War II are released this week by the Vatican. And, after years of lobbying for their release, historians are hoping the trove will provide answers to whether Pope Pius XII did enough to protect Jews during the Holocaust.
By order of Pope Francis, the Vatican Apostolic Library will open the Holy See’s (the Vatican) archives on the pontificate of Pope Pius XII – including many documents that are not yet due for release according to Vatican protocol. Francis announced the release in May 2019 saying, “The Church is not afraid of history.”
The archive will provide access to material from 1939 to 1958, including dispatches sent during World War II. This material should give insight into the politics and the diplomacy of the Holy See throughout the entire period, according to the Vatican’s Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.
Though some Catholic institutions rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Pope Pius has been criticised for his silence during the war years and his failure to publicly condemn the Nazis.
But Archbishop Gallagher said the archives will provide historians “as never before” with “a comprehensive understanding of what was going on, the type of person he was, the type of policies that Pius XII was issuing in those very terrible years, especially during the Second World War, and of the period immediately afterwards”.
Gallagher said Pope Pius XII, from the document’s witness, “emerges as a great champion of humanity, a man deeply concerned about the fate of humankind during those terrible years, somebody who was very sensitive and concerned about those who were being persecuted, somebody who was also the object of the hatred of Nazis and fascism”.
He also asserted the archive shows how those attacks were directed not only at the Pope himself, but also at the Church more generally.
Read the article by Kylie Beach on Eternity.