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Vatican Will Not Open Archives to Scholars
A panel of Catholic and Jewish historians charged with studying the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust disbanded in July after it was denied access to documents in the Vatican archives. The panel, originally composed of three Catholic and three Jewish members, was jointly appointed in 1999 by the Vatican and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), which represents a number of Jewish organizations. One Catholic member subsequently retired, and her successor had not joined the panel when it disbanded.
The panel started work with about a dozen volumes of archival materials relating to World War II that had been published by the Vatican. Last year, it issued a preliminary report that raised a number of questions and suggested that they could be answered only through recourse to additional unpublished materials relating to Pius XII, who was pope from 1939 to 1958. In a letter to the panel, the Vatican's president of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews replied that records for the years up to 1923 are accessible, but that access to later documents "is not possible at present for technical reasons." In a letter signed by all five active members, the panel responded that "without access in some reasonable manner to additional archival material, we cannot make substantial progress." Panel members concluded that "we must suspend our work."
The group had been empanelled with the hope that its research might help to resolve an ongoing rift between the church and many Jewish groups that suspect that the church was indifferent to, if not complicit in, the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Instead, the panel's activities have reignited the controversy. Some suspect that the Vatican's refusal to open the archive arises from a desire to conceal damaging evidence, while others accuse the Jewish members of the panel of acting inappropriately by making premature and critical statements to the press about the controversy. The issue is made more heated by the church's having begun the process of beatifying Pius XII, a step on the way to sainthood.
Defenders of the Vatican's action characterize as reasonable the Vatican's explanation that the materials sought are as yet uncatalogued and thus not ready for scholarly use. Some also note that delaying the release of archives for decades after the events they chronicle is not unique to the Vatican but is, in fact, common practice among most Western democracies. Critics of the Vatican, including the IJCIC, note that select scholars have been given early archival access on other occasions, and urge the Vatican to grant the same access to the panel.
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