Exhibit for anniversary of Vatican archives to include WWII material

(July 06, 2011) Documents from the still-sealed World War II section of the Vatican Secret Archives will be part of a major exhibition of Vatican papers hosted by the city of Rome. The exhibit marking the 400th anniversary of the Vatican archives will be open from February-September 2012 at Rome's Capitoline Museums. Bishop Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives, said that with special permission from the Vatican Secretariat of State, a very limited number of documents related to World War II, would be among the 100 documents and objects from the eighth to the 20th century placed on public display. "The exhibit certainly will not be able to shed new light on Pius XII because the archival papers from this pontificate are still closed," the bishop said on Tuesday at a news conference announcing the exhibit.
The archives will present four or five documents, accompanied by photographs that will convey a sense of the drama and emotion of World War II, which marked the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. But a real picture of the pope and his actions during the war will not be possible until the archives have organized and catalogued all of the papers from his pontificate and the pope has authorized their being opened to scholarly study and scrutiny, he said. The archives staff has been preparing the papers for three years, Bishop Pagano said, but it will take another three or four years to get all the material together.