Church in the World

Pope hopes to end Pius XII controversy by opening archives

Historians should be given earlier-than-scheduled access to some of the Vatican?s secret archives between 1922 and 1939, Pope John Paul II has ordered. He said he hoped the access would ?put an end to unjust and ungrateful speculation? concerning the stance of the Holy See and, specifically, Pope Pius XII towards Nazi persecution of the Jews.

But scholars quickly dismissed the offer as ?insufficient?, Robert Mickens reports from Rome. They pointed out that the documents that would be made available predated the Second World War and Pius XII?s pontificate, which lasted from 1939 to 1958. Last year an official joint Catholic-Jewish panel of historians set up in 1999 to investigate Pius XII?s attitude towards the Holocaust and the Nazis was suspended after disagreements over access to Vatican archives (The Tablet, 28 July).

On 15 February Vatican archivists issued a two-page communiqu? outlining ?the exceptional nature of the Holy Father?s gesture? to give early access to the secret files. The Vatican rule is that only documents up till the last five pontificates can be viewed ? a measure to protect people?s reputations and allow time for cataloguing the material. The research documents have been made available one pontificate at a time. In 1984, for example, Pope John Paul opened to scholars the secret archives up to 1922, which covered the years of Benedict XV. In the same year he directed the archivists to put in order documentation from the pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939).

Giuseppe Alberigo, a leading church historian who has edited a monumental five-volume history of the Second Vatican Council, said the archives that were to be opened next year could shed some light on what the Vatican actually knew about the persecution of the Jews. In an interview with the Turin-based daily La Stampa he said, however, that the real answers were in the wartime documents between 1939 and 1945. These will not be available for several more years.

The question of how much Pope Pius XII knew of the execution of Jews during the Second World War has been fiercely debated, and remains one of the thorniest issues in Jewish-Catholic relations. The issue has been brought painfully to the fore again recently in a number of new books and articles, among them John Cornwell?s Hitler?s Pope. Cornwell argued that Pius XII could have done more to oppose the rise of Nazism when he was papal nuncio in Germany in the 1920s and Secretary of State in the 1930s; in Cornwell?s presentation, Pius XII was an unwitting accomplice of the Nazi regime.

The Vatican archivists have warned that scholars may not find all they are hoping for. The nunciature in Germany suffered damage and destruction in the course of the Second World War, they pointed out. ?Very many documents from 1931-1942 were moved and may even have been destroyed well before they could be transferred to the Vatican?, they said in their statement. But one set of World War II Vatican documents ? which relate to war prisoners ? was intact, and would be opened to scholars, the archivists said. The purpose of access to archives was to ?bring to the awareness of historians the great work of charity and assistance carried out by Pius XII regarding numerous prisoners and other victims of the war, of whatever nation, religion or race?, they added.

In an interview with the German Service of Vatican Radio, the prefect for the Vatican archive, Sergio Pagano, said that ?something new? was ?sure to come to light? from the archives, but doubted the revelations would ?rewrite history?.