Pope releases secret papers

[Soldier4Christ]

Pope releases secret papers
The Vatican is releasing all the files on the inter-war pontificate of Pius XI from its secret archives.

Researchers will have access to files for the period from February 1922 to February 1939 from mid-September.

In 2003 the Vatican began making available to scholars millions of Vatican documents from the years preceding the Second World War, releasing them ahead of schedule at the request of the late Pope John Paul II.

The material to be released may include an encyclical that Pope Pius XI commissioned in 1938 to denounce racism and the violent nationalism of Nazi Germany.

Pius XI died before the encyclical, entitled The Unity of the Human Race, could be released. It was never made public.

The Vatican has long struggled to defend the reputation of Pius’s successor — Pope Pius XII — against the claims that he did not do enough to save Jews from the Holocaust.