New Report on Vatican's World War II Archives

VATICAN, OCT. 25, 00 (CWNews.com) - A special joint committee of Catholic and Jewish scholars has produced a preliminary report of their findings regarding the Vatican archives from World War II.

The 20-page report will be made public on Thursday in Rome by the 6-member committee. The scholars were charged with the task of examining the 11-volume collection of World War II archives. That collection, in turn, was published between 1965 and 1981, by a team of four Jesuit scholars commissioned by Pope Paul VI.

The Vatican's chief spokesman has announced that the preliminary report constitutes a "positive judgment" on the validity of the existing Vatican sources. Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters that the joint committee has also asked a series of questions "which, according to the members of the group, will require more documentation and deeper study."

The joint committee was established in October 1999, on the basis of an agreement struck by Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, and Seymour Reich, a New York lawyer who is active in international Jewish affairs. The committee was set up in response to complaints from Jewish groups about lack of access to the Vatican archives regarding the Holocaust.

The joint committee is composed of three American Catholics and three Jewish scholars. They are: Father John Morley of Seton Hall University in New Jersey; Father Gerald Fogarty, SJ, of the University of Virginia; Eva Fleischner, a retired professor at Montclair State College, also in New Jersey; Bernard Suchecky of the Free University of Brussels; Robert Wistrich of the University of Jerusalem; and Michel Marrus of the University of Toronto.

Catholic World News Service - Vatican Update
25. oktober 2000