The Vatican's secret archives on the pontificate of Pius XII, the Pope who never condemned the Nazis, were opened

[Inkriql]

The stories of about 4,000 Jews who asked for help, the flight of jurist Tullio Liebman to South America or the team of nuns who listened to international radios, are some of the documents of the Vatican Archives on Pope Pius XII that are open for Tuesday your study.

After ten years of work the archives of the pontificate of Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli will be made available to academics, but also more than 1,300,000 digitized documents, corresponding to the first 10 years (1939-1948), he explained in a The Secretary of State Relations, Cardinal Paul Richard Gallagher, interviews the Vatican media.

The Vatican hopes that with the opening of the archives the shadows of the pontificate of Pius XII will be clarified, accused of not having raised his voice against Nazism, and it is confirmed that his prudent silence saved thousands of Jews.

 

From the documents “the figure of the Pope emerges in all his greatness, as a defender of humanity and as a true universal pastor. Pacelli was a brave diplomat. As pope he showed unlimited charity, not always understood and shared even within the walls of the Vatican. The documents will show the efforts made to try to respond to requests for help for the salvation of the persecuted and the needy with their lives in danger, ”Gallagher added.

Johan Ickx, responsible for the archives of the Secretary of State, the Vatican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explains in an article in the Vatican media the importance of having these documents digitized since it will allow the 20 admitted researchers every day, due to problems of space, check all available documents at once, quickly, or make photocopies.
An assistant opens the section of the archive dedicated to Pope Pius XII on February 27, 2020 in the Vatican Apostolic Secret Archive. (Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)
An assistant opens the section of the archive dedicated to Pope Pius XII on February 27, 2020 in the Vatican Apostolic Secret Archive. (Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)

Ickx advances that among the documents you can navigate between the series of archives under the name: "Jews", 170 fascicles with the history of about 4,000 people, mostly Catholics of Jewish descent, but also Jews, who asked the pontiff for help.

Among them you can discover the help to escape the young humanities researcher Paul Oskar Kristeller or Tullio Liebman, considered the founder of the “Procedural School of Sao Paulo”, world renowned professor at the universities of Pavia, Turin and Milan, who He was helped to escape to South America thanks to close collaborators of Pius XII.

Scholars may consult the file "Italy 1352b", where they will find all the accusations against Alfredo Ottaviani, advisor to the Doctrine of the Faith and right hand of Pius XII, "for having given false documents to Jews and having admitted them to extraterritorial buildings."

According to the archives of which Ickx speaks, "the documents will highlight how many and what efforts were made to save the persecuted" and "at the same time, the opposition of many States to open borders to many in need will be equally evident."

It will also be possible to consult documents on that fateful October 16, 1943, when German soldiers entered the ghetto of Rome and captured 1,022 Jews, including 200 children and adolescents, and two days later sent them in 18 cattle cars to the field of concentration of Auschwitz, of which only 16 returned.

You can read the touching letters sent to Pius XII by some Jews while they were being held by the SS and the Gestapo at the Military College in Palazzo Salviati.
Nuncio Pacelli in July 1924 on the 900th anniversary of the city of Bamberg
Nuncio Pacelli in July 1924 on the 900th anniversary of the city of Bamberg

Also a note at the bottom of the page of Pope Pacelli in an office arrived from Washington in which he assured that “the Vatican had asked that this never happen again in Rome” and in which he asked if it was “prudent” that these comments come to light.

For the archivist, Pius XII was aware that it was better to work in silence so as not to arouse the attention of the Nazis.

When asked by the Pope, the secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Domenico Tardini, answered with a dry “no”.

Among the millions of documents, there are also the volumes of the Listening Service of foreign radios, a group of nuns who, between 1943 and 1954, from a room in the pontifical Palace listened to and transcribed the programs of the main international radios, providing the superiors of The Secretary of State breaking news.