Vatican: Secret WWII documents to go online

The World Jewish Congress reported that the Vatican will place online some previously secret WWII-era documents.

According to Zenit, the Catholic news agency, the Vatican will post online some documents from its archives.

The move came at the initiative of Pave the Way Foundation, a US -based group that promotes inter-religious dialogue and strives to defend wartime Pope Pius XII from allegations that he ignored Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.

Pave the Way offered to digitize some 5,125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, ranging from the period of March 1939 to May 1945, ‘Zenit’ reported. These would then be posted on the websites of both the Vatican and Pave the Way.

The group's president Gary Krupp told Zenit that the documents had been "previously published and mostly ignored,” adding that their online publication was "not meant to be a substitute for the full access" to the Vatican archives, but would “show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and the dangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Nazi regime."

Media reports, according to the WJC, said the documents would not include material directly related to Pius XII.