Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale

In the Actes, none of the documents—mostly in Italian—were translated from their original language.^[4] The introductions to the volumes and the brief descriptions preceding the documents are in French.^[4] Because the third volume contains two books, the ADSS are sometimes incorrectly referred to as a twelve-volume collection.^[7]

Inclusions and omissions

The editors describe the selected documents as a representative sample of Vatican activity during World War II; the four Jesuits claimed that only size constraints prevented them from publishing the full set of documents and that no new important revelations would accompany the eventual complete publication.^[4]

According to the count of Australian historian Paul O'Shea, the ADSS contains 107 references to Jews prior to December 1942, and substantially more thereafter; a variety of other studies have extensively listed the data received by the Vatican on the nature and extent of the atrocities throughout Europe, as can be confirmed by the ADSS.^[8]

In his article for the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano (April 29, 1998), Father Pierre Blet, the last surviving editor of the series, defended the integrity of the collection. "In the first place, it is not clear exactly how the omission of certain documents would help to exonerate Pius XII from the omissions alleged against him," Blet wrote.^[9] "On the other hand, to say in peremptory tones that our publication is incomplete is tantamount to asserting what cannot be proved: to this end it would be necessary to compare our publication with the archives and show which documents in the archives are missing from our publication." Blet added that he and three other Jesuits "did not deliberately overlook any significant document, because we would have considered it harmful to the Pope's image and the Holy See's reputation."

The editors

The four Jesuit editors also wrote many articles derived from these primary sources, most of which were published in La Civiltà Cattolica, an Italian-language Jesuit journal.

Blet

Blet's Pius XII and the Second World War : According to the Archives of the Vatican (1999) represents his interpretation of what essential conclusions can be drawn from the eleven volume collection.^[10][11][12]

Graham

Robert A. Graham's research did not stop with the publication of the ADSS; he continued to seek out primary sources within and without the Vatican and interview contemporaries almost until his death.^[13] He retired to California, taking his considerable body of records with him; this collection was made open to the public (although rarely actually used) until his death, at which point the Vatican had all the papers returned to Rome and sealed.^[13]

Translations

As of 2002, only one of the volumes had been translated into English.^[4] In 2012, Marilyn Mallory published an English translation of some of the documents.^[14]

Notes