VATICAN REFUSES JEWS REQUEST TO OPEN POPE PIUS XII ARCHIVES
30 October 2008The Vatican has rejected Jewish groups’ requests for the immediate opening of its secret archives on Pius XII’s papacy during the Holocaust years.
It says it will take at least six more years before scholars can consult the archives, which historians and Jewish groups have been clamoring to study.
Some Jewish leaders and historians have said that Pius didn’t speak out enough during World War II to save Jews during Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish people.
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Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi called the requests to see the wartime archives “understandable.”
But he said in a statement Thursday that cataloguing some 16 million documents is expected to take another six or seven years.
Rabbi David Rosen, who heads a Jewish delegation that met with Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday morning, said the subject was raised after official speeches were made. A member of the delegation asked Benedict not to advance the canonization of Pius XII until the archives are opened for objective research, Rosen said.
Rabbi David Rosen
Rosen told reporters the pope said he would seriously consider the request.
NO ON PROPOSITION 8
AND THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE
IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO DEFEAT PROPOSITION 8
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