Vatican to unseal archives on controversial WWII pope [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Vatican to unseal archives on controversial WWII pope
Pope Francis wants Pius XII, accused of not condemning Holocaust, ‘correctly’ judged
Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
Mon 4 Mar 2019 16.22 GMT
Vatican archives on Pope Pius XII, the controversial wartime pontiff accused of failing to condemn the Holocaust, are to be opened next year after pressure from campaigners and historians.
Pope Francis announced the archives would be unsealed in March 2020, eight years ahead of schedule, saying the Roman Catholic church was “not afraid of history”.
His predecessor had been “criticised, one can say, with some prejudice and exaggeration”, he added.
The role of Pius XII, a staunch anti-communist who became pope in March 1939, six months before war engulfed Europe, has long been questioned by historians.
According to a display in Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, Pius “did not intervene” when Jews were rounded up and deported from Rome to Auschwitz.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/04/vatican-to-open-archives-on-controversial-wwii-pope-pius-xii