The documentation contains 2,700 files of requests for Vatican help from Jewish groups and families, many of them baptised Catholics, so not actually practising Jews anymore.

The files were held in the Secretariat of State's archives and contain requests for papal intervention to avoid Nazi deportation, to obtain liberation from concentration camps and help finding family members. Read more

The Vatican Apostolic Library, which holds 80,000 documents of immense importance and immeasurable value, including the oldest surviving copy of the Bible and drawings and writings from Michelangelo and Galileo, has partnered with a cyber-security firm to defend its ambitious digitisation project against criminals.

The library has faced an average of 100 threats a month since it started digitising its collection of historical treasures in 2012, according to Manlio Miceli, its chief information officer.

"We cannot ignore that our digital infrastructure is of interest to hackers. A successful attack could see the collection stolen, manipulated or deleted altogether," Miceli told the Observer.

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Catholic leaders said they would open the vault to scrutiny on Monday but suggested this week that the paperwork would show that the controversial pontiff - dubbed ‘Hitler's Pope' - actually worked to save Jews behind the scenes. Read more

The lawsuit in the US federal court aims to compel the Vatican to open its archives and "release all the identities of thousands of offenders known exclusively by the Vatican and held in strict secrecy," lawyer Jeff Anderson says.

Anderson says he wants to show that the Vatican tried to cover up actions by top church officials including former Archbishop John Nienstedt and the 3,400 others who were referred to the Vatican for "credible cases of abuse."

That number was released by the Vatican in 2014.

The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit include three brothers who were abused by a former priest as recently as 2012.

The priest pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct and child pornography in connection with his contact with two of the boys, who were 12 and 14. The brothers are not named in the press release.

The lawsuit comes less than a week after Pope Francis issued a new church law requiring all priests and nuns to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities.

The law is part of a new effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable and is expected to bring countless new cases of molestation to light.

Victims' groups are dissatisfied, however, because the church law doesn't compel reporting of abuses made in confession nor does it force dioceses to tell authorities when abuses are reported.

The Vatican is struggling to deal with a global epidemic of sexual assault by priests, in particular of minors. Much of the abuse has gone on for decades.

A grand jury investigation into dioceses in Pennsylvania published in 2018 threw light on sexual abuse by "over 300 predator priests" systematically covered up by the Church, with more than 1,000 child victims identifiable.

Source

• ABS CBN News
• AP News
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

However, the documents won't include material directly relating to Pius XII.

Pope Pius XII's attitude and behaviour towards the Holocaust has often been criticised. Read more

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