Next March 2, the Vatican will open its archives on Pius XII, the most controversial pope in history, criticized for never having publicly condemned the Shoah, to a hundred historians.
For Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church, this is a moment "decisive for the contemporary history of the Church and of the world". The prelate wanted attention not to focus only on the Shoah, but also on "the tumultuous post-war period with the growing opposition between two blocs", communist and western.
A controversy started late
Decided in March 2019, the availability of these documents should make it possible to respond to the controversy over Pius XII (1939-1958), a controversy that started late in the 1960s. And in particular to determine whether the head of the Church Catholic during the Second World War, a former diplomat of the Holy See in Germany mixed with prudence, was too silent and passive, faced with the enactment of racial laws in Europe and the worst genocide in history. Could a public speech explicitly condemning the actions of the Nazis, speaking of racial laws and the extermination of the Jews, have it been able to influence German Catholics and change the course of history? Critics of Pius XII think so.
His supporters argue that thundering statements from a pope, surrounded in the Vatican by the Nazis and then the Italian fascists, would have endangered Catholics in Europe. The controversy has given birth to dozens of books, including devastating bestsellers, going so far as to speak of "Hitler's Pope" (John Cornwell in 1999). For the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo di Segni, "the story of Pius XII is not" a black legend "but rather gray". In a text published by the Italian press, he believes that "historians should work as if they were in a sterile and isolated room, free from prejudice and influence". Even if he thinks that it is a utopia, so much the subject is monopolized on one side by defenders with all kinds of Pius XII, on the other by inflexible accusers.
"It will take years to make a historic judgment"
One hundred and fifty researchers from around the world have already requested access to the central Vatican "apostolic archives" alone (formerly "secret archives"), said Mgr Sergio Pagano, who oversees this section, on Thursday, making available 121 documentary collections and 20,000 booklets on Pius XII. First served will be experts from the American Holocaust Memorial Museum and representatives of the Jewish community in Rome, he said. The researchers will compete for twenty places during what will be "a busy year", he acknowledged. But dozens of others will consult the other significant archives of the Holy See. For example, the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (ex-Inquisition).
According to its archivist Mgr Alejandro Cifres Giménez, 200 meters of shelves housing 1,749 papers are dedicated to the 19 years of pontificate of Pius XII. Available in a 14-seat reading room. Johan Ickx, from the historical archives of the State Secretariat (central government) on diplomatic relations with other states, will offer "1.3 million documents digitized and indexed, to help researchers move quickly", a novelty. Historians will for example be able to find documents on the contacts between the nuncio (ambassador of the Holy See) in Berlin and the German authorities. "It will take years to examine all these files and make an historic judgment," said Bishop Pagano, who nevertheless slipped that "nothing surprising has emerged", the period of the Second World War having already been largely unveiled by the Church in 1981.
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