It’s Time for Papal Transparency on the Holocaust

My essay in Skeptic urges the new Pope to take bold action to unearth the truth in one of the church's darkest chapters

How much did the Vatican earn from the cancelled life insurance policies of Jews killed at Nazi death camps? The answer is inside the Vatican Bank archives. The new Pope can order their release with the speed and ease with which a U.S. president issues an executive order.

“The Catholic Church has a new leader—Pope Leo XIV—born in 1955 in Chicago, Robert Francis Prevost is the first American to head the church and serve as sovereign of the Vatican City State. Many Vatican watchers will be looking for early signs that Pope Leo XIV intends to continue the legacy of Pope Francis for reforming Vatican finances and for making the church a more transparent institution.

There is one immediate decision he could make that would set the tone for his papacy. Pope Leo could order the release of the World War II archives of the Vatican Bank, the repository with files that would answer lingering questions of how much the Catholic Church might have profited from wartime investments in Third Reich and …