The keeper of the Vatican’s secrets is retiring. Here’s what he wants
you to know
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has been trying for years to debunk the
idea that its vaunted secret archives are all that secret: It has opened up the
files of controversial World War II-era Pope Pius XII to
scholars and changed the official name to remove the word “Secret” from its
title.
But a
certain aura of myth and mystery has persisted — until now.
The longtime
prefect of what is now named the Vatican Apostolic Archive, Archbishop Sergio
Pagano, is spilling the beans for the first time, revealing some of the secrets
he has uncovered in the 45 years he has worked in one of the world’s most
important, and unusual, repositories of documents.
In a new
book-length interview titled “Secretum” to be published Tuesday, Pagano
divulges some of the unknown, lesser-known and behind-the-scenes details of
well-known sagas of the Holy See and its relations with the outside world over
the past 12 centuries.
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In
conversations over the course of a year with Italian journalist Massimo Franco,
Pagano delves into everything from Napoleon’s sacking of the archive in 1810 to
the Galileo affair and the peculiar conclave — the assembly of cardinals to
elect a pope — of 1922 that was financed by last-minute donations from U.S.
Catholics.
“It’s the first time and it will also be the last because I’m about to
leave,” Pagano, 75, said in an interview with The Associated Press in his
archive office, ahead of his expected retirement later this year.
Pope Leo
XIII first opened the archive to scholars in 1881, after it had been used
exclusively to serve the pope and preserve documentation of the papacies,
ecumenical councils and Vatican offices dating from the 8th century.
With 85
kilometers (53 miles) of shelving, much of it underground in a two-story,
fireproof, reinforced concrete bunker, the archive also houses documentation
from Vatican embassies around the globe as well as specific collections from
aristocratic families and religious orders.
While often
the source of Dan Brown -esque conspiracies, it functions
much as any national or private archive: Researchers request permission to
visit and then request specific documents to review in dedicated reading rooms.
Pagano keeps
a close eye on them from a giant television screen perched to the side of his
desk, which provides a live, closed-circuit feed to the reading rooms
downstairs.
Most
recently, scholars have been flocking to the
archive to read through the documents of the pontificate of
Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope who has been criticized for not having spoken
out enough about the Holocaust.
Pope Francis
ordered the documents of his pontificate opened ahead of schedule, in 2020, so
scholars could finally have the full picture of the papacy.
Prefect of the
Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Bishop Sergio Pagano reflects on the glass
protection of the original 1530 letter kept in his office at The Vatican,
Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, and signed and sealed by the overwhelming majority of
the House of Lords that attempted to pressure Pope Clement VII into granting
the divorce to King Henry VIII of England from his wife Catherine of Aragon
that was famously denied. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
The Vatican
has long defended Pius, saying
he used quiet diplomacy to save lives and didn’t speak out publicly about Nazi
crimes because he feared retaliation, including against the Vatican itself.
Pagano is no
apologist for Pius and stands out among Vatican hierarchs for his willingness to call out Pius’ silence.
Specifically, Pagano says he cannot square Pius’ continued reluctance to
publicly condemn Nazi atrocities even
after the war ended.
“During the
war we know that the pope made a choice: He could not and would not speak. He
was convinced that an even worse massacre would have happened,” Pagano said.
“After the war, I would have expected a word more, for all these people who
went to the gas chambers.”
Pagano
attributes Pius’ continued, post-war silence to his concerns about the creation
of a Jewish state. The Vatican had a long tradition of supporting the
Palestinian people and was concerned about the fate of Christian religious sites
in the Holy Land if the territories were turned over to the newly created state
of Israel.
Any word
from Pius about the Holocaust even
after the war “could have been read in political terms as a support for the
foundation of a new state,” Pagano said.
In the book,
Pagano doesn’t hold back about his disdain for the incomplete research behind
Pius’ sainthood cause, which is now apparently on hold as scholars dissect the
newly available documentation.
The two
Jesuit researchers who compiled Pius’ sainthood dossier, the late Revs. Peter
Gumpel and Paolo Molinari, relied only on the partial, 11-volume compilation of
the papacy’s documents that was published in 1965, Pagano revealed.
“Neither Father
Gumpel nor Father Molinari ever set foot in the Apostolic Archive,” he says in
the book. He said he believed Pius’ sainthood cause should have waited until
the full archive of the pontificate was catalogued and available, and scholars
had time to draw conclusions.
“Written
documents must weigh heavily on the life of a servant of God, you can’t ignore
the archives,” Pagano told Franco, the journalist. “But the postulation by the
Jesuits wanted to bypass it.”
Aside from
the well-known stories of Vatican intrigue, the book also reveals some
novelties, including the origins of the important financial relationship
between the U.S. church and the Vatican that continues today and dates back to
the 1922 conclave.
Pagano said
that after Pope Benedict XV died, the camerlengo — the cardinal in charge of
the papal treasury and accounts — went to his safe and discovered it was
“literally empty. There wasn’t a paper, bank note or coin.” It turns out
Benedict wasn’t terribly responsible fiscally, and left the Holy See somewhat
in the red when he died on Jan. 22 of that year.
Papal
coffers were always used to fund the conclave to elect a new pope, meaning the
Holy See was in a cash crunch at a time when Europe was still reeling
financially from World War I.
The book,
for the first time, reproduces the encrypted telegrams in which the Vatican
secretary of state asked his ambassador in Washington to urgently wire “what
you have in the safe” so that the vote could take place.
According to
the telegrams, the Vatican embassy sent what U.S. churches had collected from
the American faithful, down to the cents: $210,400.09, allowing the vote that
eventually elected Pope Pius XI.
Pagano
suggests that Francis’ 2019 decision to remove the word “Secret” from the
archive’s name and rename it the “Vatican Apostolic Archive” was perhaps
another financial nod to the wealthy U.S. church — a rebranding to remove any
negative connotations and thus encourage potential donations, primarily via
“Treasures of History,” a new U.S.-based foundation that supports the archive.
At the end
of the interview, Pagano proudly showed visitors one of the archive’s prized
possessions, which he keeps in an otherwise nondescript wooden armoire near the
entrance of his office. There, behind plate glass and illuminated with special
lights, is the original 1530 letter from British nobles urging Pope Clement VII
to grant King Henry VIII an annulment so he could marry Anne Boleyn.
As is well
known, the pope refused and the king went ahead and got married, breaking with
Rome.
“You can say
that here we are at the birth of the Anglican Church,” Pagano says as he holds
up a light-tipped pointer to show off the red wax seals of some of the
signatories.
Pagano
delights in revealing how the document survived: When Napoleon Bonaparte
famously seized the Vatican archives in 1810 and carted them off to Paris,
Pagano’s predecessor as chief archivist rolled up the 1530 letter and hid it
inside a secret drawer in a chair in the archive antechamber.
“The French never found it,” Pagano says proudly, keenly aware that an
archivist’s main job is to preserve the archive.
