WORLD AT FIVE

Judgment day: Vatican ready to open its Holocaust files to the world

Controversy has raged for decades about the nature of the wartime pope’s relationship with the Nazis. All is about to be revealed, writes Philip Willan in Rome

Millions of pages of documents held in the Vatican archive will be released on March 2 for historians to peruse

ALAMY

Philip Willan

, Rome

Friday February 21 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

Historians around the world are jockeying for a place at one of the 60 desks available in the Vatican archive for the moment next month when the Holy See opens its files on the Second World War, with Pope Pius XII’s refusal to publicly condemn the Holocaust continuing to cause controversy.

Others hope to learn whether he really deserves the credit for saving Jews who were given sanctuary in Catholic institutions and monasteries, as has been claimed.

Among the first will be David Kertzer, from Brown University in the United States and the author of a Pulitzer-winning book on the relationship between the Vatican and fascism. He plans to be at the archive when it opens the new material on March 2.