FINALLY

Pope Francis to Open Pope Pius XII’s Holocaust-Era Secret Archives at Vatican

Jewish organizations have long pressed Catholic Church to reveal what it knew and when.

The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis has agreed to open the Catholic Church’s secret archives dealing with the papacy of Pope Pius XII. The World War II-era pontiff has long been accused of turning a blind eye to the horrors of the Holocaust and the persecution of Jewish people by German Nazis and Italian Fascists. The Vatican has long held that Pope Pius XII had instead secretly helped the Jews and that his legacy should not be held to scrutiny. The bid for sainthood for the pope, who died in 1958, has been stalled since 2009, when Jewish groups protested his ascension. When announcing the opening of the archives, which will begin March 2020 after they are catalogued for the public, Francis said the church is “not afraid of history.” On the contrary, he said he will open them “with a serene and confident soul, certain that serious and objective historical research will be able to evaluate it in its proper light.”

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