The Vatican Secret Archives Unveiled - George Weigel - National Review Online The very name “Vatican Secret Archives” tends to trigger the Dan Brown
reflex in minds given to conspiracy theories and black legends about the
Catholic Church. In fact, there is nothing sinister about the title of
this treasure trove of historical materials; “secret,” in this case, is
Vaticanspeak for the private archives of the papacy, which were opened
to qualified scholars in 1881 by Leo XIII, the founder of the modern
papacy and a man unafraid of the truths that history could teach.
