Pope Francis appointed an Augustinian priest as the new prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, which preserves documents of the Catholic Church dating back to the 8th century.
The Vatican announced July 5 that Father Rocco Ronzani, a professor of patristics in Rome, Italy, will serve as head of what was previously known as the Vatican’s “secret archive.”
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The Vatican Apostolic Archive contains more than 85 kilometers of underground shelves preserving documentation from historic papacies, ecumenical councils, conclaves, and Vatican nunciatures or embassies around the world.
Pope Leo XIII opened the archive to scholars in 1881. Qualified researchers can request permission to visit and view specific documents.
Many historians researching World War II have flocked to the Vatican’s underground shelves since 2020, when Pope Francis opened the archives of Pius XII’s pontificate.
The Vatican archive also contains the original 1530 letter addressed to Pope Clement VII, requesting permission for King Henry VIII’s marriage to be annulled, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.
Pope Francis renamed the archive, which had been known as the Vatican Secret Archive since the 17th century, to the Vatican Apostolic Archive in 2019 to avoid the negative associations that accompany modern interpretations of the word “secret.”
As the new prefect, Ronzani succeeds Mons. Sergio Pagano, who worked in the Vatican archives for 45 years, serving as prefect since 1997.
Mons. Pagano recently published a book titled secretwhich describes some notable historical events documented in the archives, from the trial of Galileo to when Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops raided the Vatican archive in 1810.
The former prefect will take on a new role as advisor to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
Father Ronzani was born in Rome on February 21, 1978. He entered the Order of Saint Augustine in 1997 and was ordained a priest in 2004. He holds a Doctor in Theology and Patristic Sciences from the Pontifical Patristic Institute Augustinianum in Rome, where he currently teaches.
He serves as a consultant to the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints and as current director of the historical archives of the Italian province of the Augustinians.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Courtney Mares
Courtney Mares is the Vatican correspondent for Catholic News Agency (CNA), EWTN News’ English agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and received the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.