Vatican City, Jun 7, 2004 / 22:00 pm
This month the secret Vatican Archives will publish "Inter Arma Caritas: the Information Office in the Vatican for prisoners of war instituted by Pius XII (1939-1947).”
The book consists of two volumes, Inventory and Documents, and is 1,472 pages long. In addition, there are eight DVDs which contain the images of the original files in the archive and the names of 2,100,000 prisoners about whom information has been requested.
The first volume opens with a letter from Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano and a study by Fr. Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Secret Vatican Archives. There will also be an analytic inventory, proceeded by a historic introduction.
The second volume gathers writings - more than 10 million letters - and documents in chronological order which are divided into chapters. The two-volume set of books will be sold together, not seperately and will cost about $80.