In a speech yesterday to to superiors, employees and collaborators of the Vatican Secret Archive, Pope Francis announced that he is opening the Vatican Archives for the reign of Pope Pius XII. The records will become available next year. Pius XII has been criticized for what has been seen by some as a lack of action to oppose the Holocaust. (
Background.) In his speech (
full text and report from Zenit), Pope Francis said in part:
The figure of that Pontiff, who found himself guiding the Barque of Peter at one of the saddest and darkest moments of the twentieth century, agitated and lacerated by the last world war, with the consequent period of reorganization of the nations and post-war reconstruction, has already been investigated and studied in many aspects, sometimes discussed and even criticized (it could be said with some prejudice or exaggeration)....
The Church is not afraid of history; rather, she loves it, and would like to love it more and better, as God does! So, with the same trust of my predecessors, I open and entrust to researchers this documentary heritage.
[Thanks to Tom Rutledge for the lead.]
