The Opening of the Vatican Archives for the Pontificate of Pius XII: Controversial Memory, Scholarly Debates, and Archival Approaches

In March 2020, the Vatican opened its archives for the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958). Given the wide range of materials now available to researchers and the declassification process specific to the Vatican, this opening has been long-awaited, especially with regard to the controversial memory of Pius XII’s attitude towards Nazism and the Holocaust. In order to better understand these issues, this article reviews the specificities of the Vatican’s archival regime and examines the scholarly developments expected from the opening of the Pius XII archives. The resurgence of sensationalistic polemics (archival fetishism, myth of transparency of the document, and apologetic discourses) after the 2020 opening obscures crucial questions of historical method raised by these very rich and peculiar materials. The heterogeneity of the Vatican archives, scattered between several collections and repositories, calls for a meticulous work of cross-referencing and micro-analysis of the sources. When examined “against the light” (A. Frugoni), the archives can offer a fine-grained and more nuanced picture of the Church’s attitude, on several levels and beyond the figure of the pope alone, thus highlighting the ambivalences, internal tensions, and dilemmas of Vatican policies during this period.