Culture

Vatican to open archives on controversial war-time Pope Pius XII

Vatican City, Feb 20 (EFE) (Camera: Jorge Ortiz).- Momentum has been gathering and interest swelling ahead of the Vatican's upcoming opening of archives on controversial Pope Pius XII.More than 150 researchers and historians have signed up to gain access to the Vatican's apostolic library, which is due to be unsealed on 2 March.The Vatican's chief librarian and archivist said Thursday that researchers of many different nationalities had requested access to the files.Eugenio Pacelli, who was pope between 1939 and 1958, has been accused of not doing enough to protect Jews during the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and the Holocaust during which six million Jewish people were killed.FOOTAGE OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE ON THURSDAY.SOUNDBITES OF:BISHOP SERGIO PAGANO, HEAD OF THE VATICAN APOSTOLIC ARCHIVE:"It will be the historian's duty to look at the documents and honestly and critically compare them with different sources and then make his/her own judgment.""But we believe that new documents and old documents (which have been already published and many people don't know about) can provide particular aspects and objectives of a pontificate that were crucial."ALEJANDRO DIÉGUEZ, ARCHIVIST: "There are more than 3,000 boxes and the inventory is formed by 43,283 pages."