Pius's role - helping or ignoring the plight of Jews during the holocaust - has been much debated.

On the one hand, he has often been criticised by Jews for his apparent silence during the holocaust. On the other, some Catholic leaders say Pius and other Catholic clergy helped European Jews.

They also argue that during the Nazi regime, broad action by the Church could have resulted in severe reprisals against Catholics.

Although the Vatican usually waits until a pontiff has been dead for 70 years before opening the archives, an exception has been made in this case, so the documentation can be seen while holocaust survivors are still alive. Pius died nearly 61 years ago in 1958.

Vatican archivists began preparing the documentation for consultation in 2006, at the orders of German-born Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.

Francis says he hopes opening the archives will allow "serious and objective historical research" to "evaluate, in the proper light and with appropriate criticism, the praiseworthy moments of the Pontiff..."

The archives will also produce information about "moments of serious difficulties, of tormented decisions," he says.

These moments may have seemed to some as "reticence" but were attempts to keep humanitarian initiatives alive.

The documents are expected to include various letters and messages between Pius and other Vatican officials and Catholic clergy throughout Europe.

Noting that opening the archives is "the right thing to do", International Director of Inter-religious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Rabbi David Rosen, says he hopes the documents will provide a clearer picture of Pius's actions.

The AJC has been raising the issue of opening the archives with the Vatican for the past 30 years, Rosen says.

Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives Bishop Sergio Pagano also reportedly requested time to catalogue the large amount of documents before their release.

Holocaust historian and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr Efraim Zuroff, say Pius never specifically denounced the Nazi persecution and the mass murder of European Jews. Nor did he ask Catholics to help save Jews from persecution.

Zuroff says "two cardinal questions" needed to be answered about Pius's papacy.

"The first is what information reached the Vatican regarding Holocaust crimes, and the second is when did that information reach Pius XII?"

He says the Vatican's papal nuncios who served as ambassadors were active in many countries where Jews were persecuted and murdered, and that he would have received "accurate information regarding the fate of the Jews… at a relatively early date, most probably before such news reached the Allies."

Source

• Times of Israel
• The Jerusalem Post
• CruxNow
• Image: The Times of Israel

Others, ancient texts that disprove the existence of Jesus.

Perhaps dark truths that would discredit and destroy the Church?

A mistranslated Latin word may be responsible for the conspiracy theories about the Vatican Secret Archives.

In fact, the actual contents can stand on their own without delving into the absurd.

The archives, or Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum, contains historical records chronicling intriguing historical events.

Its contents, once plundered by Napoleon and moved to Paris, span 12 centuries.

• There's the document that began the Protestant reformations: Pope Leo X's 1521 decree excommunicating Martin Luther.
• A 1530 petition from 85 English clergymen and lords asks Pope Clement VII to annul King Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The seals of many of the signatories were affixed to the petition, each held in place by red ribbon. This is considered the source of the term "red tape." Clement refused, of course, leading to the establishment of the Anglican Church.
• Michelangelo penned a letter to the pope warning that Vatican guards hadn't received paychecks in three months, and that they were threatening to walk off the job.
• A year after Columbus landed in what became North America, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Cetera, the 1493 papal bull that split the New World between Spain and Portugal.
• There are letters from Abraham Lincoln as well as Jefferson Davis, who wrote to try to convince Pope Pius IX that the South was an innocent victim of Northern aggression. Neither man was Catholic.
• The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the notion that Mary was conceived without original sin, was articulated in 1854 on a piece of parchment that's in the archives. Continue reading

Sources

• Crux
• Image: Travels for You