The Vatican's Secrets revealed
It has long been speculated that the vaunted secret archives of the Vatican hold highly sensitive information that is purposefully withheld from the public. In fact, the “Vatican secrets” have become something of an urban legend.
Despite the efforts to demystify them, a certain level of mystery has remained attached to the Vatican archives- until now, that is- as the longtime prefect of what is now named the Vatican Apostolic Archive, Archbishop Sergio Pagano, is revealing some of the secrets he has uncovered in the 45 years he’s worked in one of the world’s most considerable, and atypical, repositories of documents.
In a new book-length interview titled “Secretum,” which is expected to be published this Tuesday, Pagano shares some of the unknown, and ambiguous behind-the-scenes details of well-known sagas of the Holy See and its connections to the outside world over the past 12 centuries.
With 85 kilometers (53 miles) of shelving, and a significant portion of it being 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.
The only people permitted to visit the archive outside of the clergy are researchers who request permission to visit and then request specific documents to review in dedicated reading rooms- in which they are monitored by Pagano himself, who watches them from a TV screen on top of his desk with a live closed-circuit feed.
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VATICAN CITY — 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.
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.
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