Many historians researching World War II have come to the Vatican’s underground stacks since 2020 when Pope Francis opened the archives of the pontificate of Pius XII.
The Vatican archive also contains the original 1530 letter addressed to Pope Clement VII requesting permission for an annulment for King Henry VIII so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.
Pope Francis changed the name of the archive, which had been known as the Vatican Secret Archive since the 17th century, to Vatican Apostolic Archive in 2019 to avoid the negative associations that accompany modern interpretations of the word “secret.”
As the new prefect, Ronzani succeeds Archbishop Sergio Pagano, who worked in the Vatican archives for 45 years, serving as prefect since 1997.
Pagano recently published a book titled “Secretum,” which describes some of the noteworthy historical “nuggets” documented in the archives from the Galileo trial to when Napoléon Bonaparte’s troops raided the Vatican archive in 1810.
The former prefect will take up a new role as the assessor for the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
