Father Fogart does not accuse the Vatican of withholding the archives as denounced by Reich
Washington (USA), July 27th (VID) - Padre James Fogarty, S.J., a historian, the only religious of the joint international Jewish-Catholic panel, has objected to the approach against the Holy See adopted by Seymour Reich, the chairman of the Panel itself who is Jewish. "I dissociate myself from the press release" made by Reich, Father Fogarty declared. In this text, Reich has declared that the panel which had been entrusted with the task of inquiring into Pius XII's position on Nazism, had been forced to suspend its research because the Holy See had failed to open its archives. Father Fogarty declared that as far as he was concerned "there is no protest against the Vatican", and pointed out that he had signed time the letter of the Panel to Cardinal Kasper, but only to acknowledge "that the working group of cannot continue." "As historian - the religious added - I acknowledge that would be opportune to open the archives, but neither Cardinal Cassidy (ex-president of the Pontifical Commission for Interreligious Dialogue and the person responsible for the appointment of members of the panel, author's note) nor Cardinal Kasper (the current president of the same Pontifical Commission, author's note), are in a position to promise or to guarantee this opening." The matter is open from many months. The Commission was set up in 1999 in order to look into the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi period, notwithstanding the12 volumes which published by the Holy See in the 1960's under the direction of four eminent Jesuit historians. Last October, at the end of the last working session, a preliminary report was published with 47 questions which needed to be answered. Following solicitations by Cardinal Kasper to have the complete report, the panel's response was negative, alleging the impossibility to have access to the Vatican archives, whose documents can only be consulted up to the year 1923, made the report impossible. This difficulty had been clearly pointed out by Cardinal Mejia, the director of Vatican Archives,
Vidimus Dominum
27. juli 2001