Posted on 01/02/2010 4:42:07 AM PST by NYer
Ping!
So little has changed in this respect, then.
Amazon has the book listed for a bit under $100.00 here.
Here is the publisher's link. They also have a very expensive special edition.
Vatican planned to move to Portugal if Nazis captured wartime Pope
Secret plans were drawn up by the Vatican to elect a new Pope and flee to a friendly country should Hitler have carried out his threat to kidnap the wartime Pontiff, it was claimed yesterday.
Pope Pius XII told senior bishops that should he be arrested by the Nazis, his resignation would become effective immediately, paving the way for a successor, according to documents in the Vatican's Secret Archives.
The bishops would then be expected to flee to a safe country probably neutral Portugal where they would re-establish the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and appoint a new Pontiff.
That Hitler considered kidnapping the Pope has been documented before, but this is the first time that details have emerged of the Vatican's strategy should the Nazis carry out the plan...
"Pius wouldn't leave voluntarily. He had been invited repeatedly to go to Portugal or Spain or the United States but he felt he could not leave his diocese under these severe and tragic circumstances." Vatican documents, which still remain secret, are believed to show that Pius was aware of a plan formulated by Hitler in July 1943 to occupy the Vatican and arrest him and his senior cardinals. ""
It simply means not accessible to the general public, much as certain research areas in university libraries can only be accessed with special permission.
Those libraries have been open to researchers since the 1880’s. It’s just that you can’t have everyone and his brother pawing over a letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson, or it would disintegrate.
That is where they keep the real bible.
Thanks for doing the research and posting that link!
A secret archive in the Vatican? So everything Dan Brown wrote must be true!!!
Vatican ping
Or maybe other items that belong to someone else...?
You forgot the /sarc note.
“In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khans grandson demands that the pontiff travel to central Asia in person with all of his kings in tow to pay service and homage to us as an act of submission, threatening that otherwise you shall be our enemy.”
And where are you now Guyuk?
I’d say more like rare, unrevealed, undisclosed, private, important, delicate and protected. But if I wanted to go for sensation I guess I’d have to say “secret”.
You wrote:
“Why a secrect archive? What is the Vatican hiding?”
Nothing. Any scholar can see these documents. The patriarchs have secret documents too - and no one gets to see them. Usually those are letters and documents about internal problems, bad priests, bad marriages, etc. The Catholic Church also has plenty of such documents. The one muentioned in the article are not actually secret at all, however.
Oops! Should be “ones mentioned”.
A “Secret archive” that has been open to researchers since 1980 isn’t so secret. It’s essentially a trove of documents so large that the Vatican lost track of what they had, so they allowed outside researchers to rummage through their “attic” to see what they could find.
I just find this interesting; it has nothing to do with the article since they mean “secret” in the modern sense:
The modern usage of ‘secret’ comes to us via the mass. Initially, the word meant “set apart,” as opposed to collect, which, of course means, “gather together.” The Collect of the mass is the prayers said with the priest and congregation in unison; the Secret of the mass is the prayers said by the priest on his own. Thus, secret came to mean something said privately, in quiet tones.
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