Vatican not ready to open files on Pius

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican rejected requests yesterday to immediately open its secret archives on wartime Pope Pius XII, who critics say did not speak out enough to save Jews during Hitler's extermination campaign.

But a Jewish leader said Pope Benedict XVI told a Jewish group he would give "serious consideration" to their request to freeze the sainthood process for Pius XII until the archives on Pius's papacy were opened.

Rabbi David Rosen said the requests, as well as the pope's comments, came during a meeting yesterday between Benedict and the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the requests to see the wartime archives were "understandable," but added it would take another six or seven years to catalog those 16 million documents.

Later, when asked about Rosen's comments, Lombardi said Benedict's response was not a "public commitment."

"You shouldn't read this response for beyond what it is," Lombardi said. "It is a polite, serious response. He always takes seriously what he is told."

Currently, the archives can be consulted only up through the papacy of Pius XII's predecessor, Pius XI, which ended in early 1939, a few months before World War II began in Europe.

Pius XII was Pius XI's secretary of state, as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. Some scholars who have examined Vatican archive documents say Pacelli was an indecisive diplomat as Nazism and Fascism took hold in parts of Western Europe.

The Vatican says Benedict has been reflecting on documentation gathered by Church officials about Pius XII's virtues as part of the process toward possible beatification, the last formal step before possible sainthood.

"In order to come to judgment on Pope Pius, the archives need to be available on an open basis," Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a telephone interview.

Benedict, marking the 50th anniversary recently of Pius's death, has described him as a great pope who spared no effort to try to save Jews.

ASSOCIATED PRESS