though it leveled no such accusations against the three Catholic members. According to sources quoted by The Guardian newspaper, access to the Secret Archives 'was blocked by a cabal led by the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.' Cardinal Sodano, it was suggested, opposes opening the Archives because it would set a terribly dangerous precedent and leave the Vatican vulnerable to other historical investigations, such as the relationship between the Holy See and the murderous military regimes of Latin America.
Clearly, there are those within the Church who would like the Vatican to offer a more complete accounting of its wartime actions, coupled with a more energetic admission of guilt for the Church's persecution of the Jews. Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee appears to be one of them. 'We Catholics through the centuries acted in a fashion contrary to God's law toward our Jewish brothers and sisters,' Archbishop Weakland told Congregation Shalom in Fox Point, Wisconsin, in November 1999. 'Such actions harmed the Jewish community through the ages in both physical and psychological ways.'
The archbishop then made the following remarkable statement: 'I acknowledge that we Catholics--by preaching a doctrine that the Jewish people were unfaithful, hypocritical and God-killers-- reduced the human dignity of our Jewish brothers and sisters and created attitudes that made reprisals against them seem like acts of conformity to God's will. By doing so, I confess that we Catholics contributed to the attitudes that made the Holocaust possible.'
