Prisoners of Their Office?

Michael R. Marrus May 3, 2010 - 4:10pm

Pope and Devil
The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich
by Hubert Wolf, translated by Kenneth Kronenberg
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, $29.95, 336 pp.

Spurred by widespread criticism over the unavailability of its documents from the Nazi era, the Vatican in 2003 began to open secret archives to researchers, making public an array of material from the pontificate of Achille Ratti, who as Pius XI held office from 1922—the year of Mussolini’s march on Rome—to his death, in 1939, on the eve of World War II. The Vatican is now preparing to release documents from the pontificate of Ratti’s successor, Eugenio Pacelli, the wartime Pope Pius XII....

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Topics: 
Books
Bishops
Foreign Affairs
Jewish-Christian Relations
Religious Life
Theology

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