ROME - The Vatican plans to post selected documents from itsWorld War II secret archives online, according to a Catholic newsagency.
The move came at the initiative of Pave the Way, a US-basedfoundation that promotes interfaith dialogue and has striven to countercriticism that wartime Pope Pius XII ignored Jewish suffering duringthe Holocaust, Zenit news agency reported Friday.
Pave the Way offered to digitize some 5,125 descriptions and copiesof documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from theperiod of March 1939 to May 1945, Zenit reported. These would then beposted on the Web sites of both the Vatican and Pave the Way.
Pave the Way head Gary Krupp told Zenit that the documents inquestion had been "previously published and mostly ignored," such as"the 'Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs a la Seconde GuerreMondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the SecondWorld War]'" between 1965 and 1981.Krupp told Zenit that the publication of these documents was "notmeant to be a substitute for the full access" to the Vatican archives,"but will absolutely show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and thedangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Naziregime."