Vatican to Open Some WWII-Era Files on Pius XII

VATICAN CITY —  The Vatican, seeking to answer criticism that Pope Pius XII did little to oppose the Nazi slaughter of Jews, pledged Friday to open some of its secret World War II-era archives next year.

It said that Pope John Paul II is speeding up the scheduled release of selected files “to help bring an end to unjust and ungrateful speculation” about a predecessor he has hailed as “a great pope.”

Seymour D. Reich, the Jewish coordinator of a panel of Roman Catholic and Jewish historians studying the period, called the partial opening a disappointment. He said the documents promised next year could answer no more than two of the panel’s 47 questions about the wartime pontiff’s attitude toward the Holocaust.

Without fuller Vatican disclosure, Reich said, the other answers will remain hidden in other files that, according to Friday’s announcement, are to be released starting in 2005.

Pius XII’s public silence on the Holocaust is one of the most sensitive issues in Catholic-Jewish relations.

Vatican scholars say Pius XII worked behind the scenes to help Jews. Jewish leaders want the record set straight before the Vatican advances toward his beatification, a step that would put him on the road to sainthood.

“Any release of documents is a positive step, but we hope that this signals what independent scholars have been asking for--unfettered access to the archives,” said Elan Steinberg, executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress. “It would make no sense to beatify him and then see what the historical verdict is.”

John Paul has made rapprochement with Jews a hallmark of his papacy. But a 1998 Vatican document atoning for Roman Catholic acts of anti-Semitism absolved Pius XII of long-standing charges that he facilitated the Holocaust by remaining silent.

In response to Jewish criticism of that document, the Vatican appointed Catholic historians to study the scant 11 volumes of wartime files the Vatican has made public--and invited Jewish historians to join them.

The Catholic-Jewish panel’s report in October 2000 portrayed Pius XII as a pope engaged in fruitless diplomacy as reports of Nazi atrocities poured into the Vatican, but it withheld final judgment. The historians said the 11 volumes left out Vatican responses to those atrocity reports, and they asked for new archives that would help answer 47 questions.

The historians suspended work last July after the Vatican declined to provide the relevant files.

Friday’s Vatican announcement aimed to end the standoff. The files promised next year deal with the Holy See’s relations with Germany from 1922 to 1939, during the papacy of Pius XII’s predecessor, Pius XI. The future Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, was the Holy See’s ambassador to Germany and secretary of state during part of that period.

Without giving a timetable, the Vatican also promised documents on wartime prisoners and said they will show that Pius XII carried out “great works of charity and help” for prisoners of “all nations, religions and races.”

The Vatican said documents about its relations with Germany during Pius XII’s papacy, which lasted from 1939 to 1958, would be released only after the entire 1922-39 archive is opened about three years from now. The process is slow, the announcement said, because of a shortage of specialized archivists to catalog the files.

“It is regrettable that the Vatican is still reluctant to open all the relevant archives,” said Reich, who heads the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations. He said the panel of historians should not meet again “until we have all the material we asked for.”

Two of the panel’s questions deal with the period covered by files promised next year. One involves Pacelli’s input in drafts of Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical condemning Nazism and racism. The other asks how Pacelli, as secretary of state, reacted to an appeal by a German Catholic prelate for Vatican condemnation of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish riots of 1938 that foreshadowed the extermination of 6 million European Jews.

Most of the panel’s questions cover Pacelli’s behavior as pope, Reich said. As Jews were being slaughtered in 1941, for example, the archbishop of Berlin asked Pius XII to “issue an appeal in favor of these unfortunates.”

The panel asked: “What impression did the archbishop’s words make on Pius XII? What discussions, if any, took place about making such a public appeal? And was any further information about Nazi anti-Jewish policy sought?”