Any hopes that the Vatican might open its long-secret archives to those researching Pope Pius XII's role in World War II and the Holocaust vanished last week--perhaps for years to come. A church-initiated joint Catholic-Jewish historical committee disbanded after receiving a letter from Walter Cardinal Kasper, president of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, saying that access to the archives was not possible "for technical reasons." The real reason, however, was probably anger. The committee, formed in 1999, was officially charged with reviewing 11 volumes culled from the archives between 1965 and 1981. But last October its members...
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