The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday welcomed the announcement by Pope Francis that he plans to authorize the opening of the Vatican’s World War II archives so that scholars and historians have an opportunity to fully study the history of that time and the Church’s actions during the Holocaust. The archive will be open to researchers starting March 2, 2020.
“The opening of the Vatican’s archives is an extraordinarily important announcement and a welcome moment in the history of Catholic-Jewish relations,” said Rabbi David Fox Sandmel, ADL Director of Interreligious Dialogue. “The inaccessibility of the archives has been a continued source of tension in Jewish-Catholic relations and a frustration for historians. Assuming all of the documents will be made available to researchers, then this is precisely what historians and those of us concerned about an accurate account of the actions of the pope and the Vatican during the war have been asking for. What transpired during those years cannot be known and assessed until researchers have complete access to the archives.”