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The Vatican says Pius worked quietly to save Jews and thereby not worsen the situation for many others at risk, including Catholics in parts of Nazi-occupied Europe.

When Francis announced the opening of the archives last year, he said the Church was “not afraid of history,” a theme repeated on Thursday at a presentation for reporters by Vatican archivists.

Bishop Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives, said documents from the World War Two period contain millions of pages divided into 121 sections divided by topics.

Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images

The consulting area in the archives offices can accommodate 60 scholars at a time and all the space has been booked for the rest of the year, Pagano said. The scholars include some from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“We will not pass judgment for now. We will leave that to scholars. The material is there. It is diversified,” Pagano said.

“We will leave each person to draw their own conclusions but we have no fear. The good (that Pius did) was so great that it will dwarf the few shadows,” he said.

OPEN MIND

David Kertzer, a Brown University professor who has written several books about the papacy and the Jews, said scholars were indebted to the Vatican for making the archives available but one had to keep an open mind about what might be found in them.

“It’s true that one should not be thinking in terms of ‘scoops’ and serious scholars need to have a larger picture in mind than looking at a single document,” said Kertzer, who will be one of the first scholars to view the archives.