VATICAN CITY (AP) - A major Jewish group urged the Vatican on Tuesday to grant more access to its World War II-era archives so scholars can learn exactly what the Vatican knew about the Holocaust.
The call from the New York-based Anti-Defamation League came a day after a panel of Jewish and Catholic historians announced they had suspended their research into the Vatican's wartime record, saying they couldn't proceed without access to the documents.
The panel was appointed by the Vatican and another Jewish organization in 1999 to examine the wartime actions of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused by Jews of having failed to speak out while the Holocaust was going on.
The Vatican official in charge of relations with other religions, Cardinal Walter Kasper, told the panelists in a June 21 letter that documents dating after 1923 wouldn't be available to them for ``technical reasons.''
Catholic members of the panel said the reams of documents merely weren't ready for release because the two Vatican archivists hadn't catalogued and bound them.
Panelists acknowledged they were never promised access to the documents - and in fact had never demanded to see the papers. But in a July 20 letter to Kasper announcing their decision to suspend their work, the panelists said they had hoped that during the course of their research the documents would be made available.
AP-NY-07-24-01 2235EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.