Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Vatican to publish WWII documents online

The Holy See is planning to publish over 9,000 pages of World War II era documents from the Vatican Secret Archives free of charge on the internet.

The documents are expected to highlight the “unique efforts” of wartime pope, Pius XII, ZENIT reports.

The move to more publicly provide the “previously published and mostly ignored” documents is in part a response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, said the Zenit news agency quoting the foundation’s president Gary Krupp.

Krupp, a New Yorker of Jewish descent, was cited saying that “the ‘Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs a la Seconde Guerre Mondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War],” will “shortly be available for worldwide scrutiny and study online”.

The initiative is “not meant to be a substitute for the full access” to the archives, “but will absolutely show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and the dangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Nazi regime,” Krupp said.

“Ironically,” he said “the Vatican Secret Archives [from the period prior] to 1939 were opened over two years ago,” and they showed that “65% of Pacelli’s ministry has simply been ignored by the critics who call for the war years to be opened.

“We sincerely hope that international historians will carefully scrutinise these records.”

The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicising, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from the period of March 1939 to May 1945. Krupp expects the digitisation of over 9,000 pages to take some four weeks to complete.

The documents will be available on the Web site of his foundation as well as that of the Vatican.
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