The good news: After years of agitation among prelates, historians and Jewish leaders, on March 2 the Vatican will fully open its covert archives that cover Pope Pius XII’s performance during the Nazi era. 

The bad news for journalists: It will take months, even years, for expert researchers to draw coherent conclusions from the estimated 16 million pages of documents. Neverthelessl, retrospectives on the Pius debate since the 1960s will be timely just now, drawing upon the massive material in newsroom morgues and online.

The issues surrounding this pontiff — a long-pending and controversial candidate for sainthood — are huge for Jewish relations. Beginning in 1920, Pius was the Vatican’s envoy to Germany, and during his years as secretary of state its top strategist on Nazism. Then his 1939 election as pope coincided with war and the Holocaust.

The big historic question: Did he say and do enough as Hitler’s regime oppressed Jews and eventually slaughtered them by the millions?

The Vatican completed a partial release of historical texts on Pius  in 1981 but the new, complete batch is expected to be more enlightening. The Holy See is offering assurances that scholars are welcome to apply for access to the collection regardless of religious views or ideologies. What historians are in line, and what journalists will be on the list? 

Sources to note from Nicole Winfield’s Associated Press scene-setter include Brown University historian David Kertzer and Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s international interreligious director (based in Jerusalem but reachable via AJC publicist Kenneth Bandler, bandlerk@ajc.org or 212-891-6771).  

Now, here is a second subject for this week’s Memo package.

The news media are pondering Pope Francis’ February decision to dodge proposals from South America that the church experiment with ordaining married men as priests in places with severe need. That would have bent nine centuries of mandatory celibacy (except for the Eastern Rites and individual cases). Here was colleague Clemente Lisi’s take. 

Francis was considered more open to such innovations than his papal predecessors, and perhaps his successors as well. Yet this by no means ends the debate.  Journos will certainly continue to give ink and air to Catholic and outsider critics of the celibacy rule, which is not regarded as dogma and in theory could be immediately amended by a pope. 

Here’s one follow-up story The Religion Guy attempted years ago without success. Priests bound to celibacy continually undertake secret, illicit relationships with women that produce children. What’s the extent of this? How does the church treat these cases? How does the celibacy tradition affect these children and how should the church minister to them?   

A prime source on such questions is Vincent Doyle, who is the main reason the situation is no longer quite so hush-hush, Doyle, a psychotherapist in Galway, Ireland, was the clandestine son of Father John J. Doyle, a priest of the Spiritan order who ministered in the Camden, N.J., diocese and then Ireland, and died in 1995. Only later did Vincent learn that this godfather was also his literal father.

After researching such situations and the heartache they cause, Doyle in 2014 launched Coping International and its self-help website for children of priests. The next year he brought his effort to the attention of the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe, which had won a Pulitzer for investigating priestly molesting scandals. The Globe coverage on priests’ children  (paywalled)  ran in 2017 with the hed “Children of Catholic Priests Live with Secrets and Sorrow,” followed by media in Ireland. 

Significantly, Doyle’s work is encouraged and funded by Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. He has stated that the “silencing and stigmatizing in childhood has long term psychological effects into adulthood. The Irish Catholic Bishops have condemned the imposition of secrecy agreements in such situations.” They have also issued guidelines for treating these cases.

Pope Francis’ commission working on clergy sexual abuse is also assigned to consider how the church should respond to priests’ children. A year ago the Holy See acknowledged it has operating guidelines for such cases but declined to make them public.

 North American reporters should investigate what policies their dioceses have in place. Via Doyle (reachable at childrenofpriestsinternational@gmail.com) they can seek priests’ children in their areas who are willing to share their experiences.

Click here for a reminder of The Guy’s 2018 story suggestion regarding the ongoing debate over whether the celibacy rule is implicated in Catholic molesting scandals or not.