The vatican and the eastern bloc

16 July 2025

This article has been originally published in New Eastern Europe, Issue 4,2025.

Five years after the Vatican unsealed its archives on the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, historians are only beginning to uncover the depth of insight they offer into the post-war transformation of Eastern Europe. Far beyond matters of church history, these documents reveal how the Holy See navigated the rise of communism, supported persecuted Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, and responded to the upheaval of millions across the continent.

In March 2020, the Vatican Apostolic Archives opened to consultation a long-awaited treasure trove of documents spanning the neuralgic years of 1939–1958. Named the Vatican Secret Archive until 2019, its extensive holdings are housed in a „bunker” — an underground storage facility in Vatican City. While scholars around the world braced for revelations concerning the Holy See’s wartime diplomacy and the Holocaust, another equally compelling and underexplored story lies within: the history of Eastern Europe during one of its most turbulent transformations from the ruins of World War II to life under state socialism, as seen by the lens of the Vatican.

The newly accessible Vatican fonds, having been open for five years, illuminate the role of the Holy See as a global religious actor, diplomatic player and humanitarian force in the Cold War order. These documents, counting over 16 million pages, provide extraordinary insight into the inner workings of the evolving Catholic Church, communications with the faithful behind the Iron Curtain, and the global connections of displaced peoples from the East.

This section of the archives was expected to be open to consultation in the late 2020s, as typically it occurs 70 to 75 years after the death of the pontiff to protect sensitive information and allow time for the organization and cataloging of documents. Pope Benedict XVI initiated the organization of the archives to prepare them for scholarly use, and Pope Francis subsequently advanced the timeline for access, authorizing their opening earlier than anticipated, stating : “The Church is not afraid of history but, rather, she loves it, and would like to love it more and better, as God loves it! Thus, with the same confidence of my Predecessors, I open and entrust this patrimony of documents to researchers.” 

The opening required extensive preparations by the archivists and scholars, with cataloguing and documentation efforts spanning over 12 years. Just to be sure, open stands here for being made available to qualified researchers according to the archive’s regulations. Since the opening, for much of this time the reading rooms were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then operated at limited capacity. On top of that, parts of the fonds are still being inventoried and some of the indexes have been released only recently.

Beyond the Church: Transnational Catholicism in the Cold War

The significance of the Vatican archives reaches far beyond ecclesiastical or Italian diplomatic history. The Catholic Church – transnational in structure and global in scope – was uniquely positioned to observe, interpret and sometimes influence the seismic political and social shifts occurring across Europe. As communist regimes rose in Eastern Europe, the Church remained both a target of repression and a node of underground resistance, while denouncing clergy who collaborated with the regime, so-called “patriot priests” (księża patrioci in Polish).

The pontificate of Pius XII coincided with this transition. Once home to some of the strongest Catholic traditions in Europe, countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania came under atheist regimes that regarded Rome’s influence with deep suspicion. The Vatican, in turn, became a focal point for pleas, reports, and appeals from clergy, laypeople, and refugees alike. 

The documents in the archives detail how the Vatican tried to reach to and unite Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, as well as support young anti-communist intellectuals in exile, especially in the US, expecting them to one day return to Eastern Europe. Still, the Vatican was very careful whom to trust. Some of the dissident-groups were very radical, especially in terms of nationalism, and in conflict with each other, as well as with US institutions and thus the Vatican often first tried to find out more about their targets and ideals before offering their support and resources. Furthermore, the archives contain detailed records documenting the systematic persecution of the Catholic faithful and religious institutions across Eastern Europe and the USSR. They also include reports on Catholic dissidents who resisted communist repression, often at great personal risk.

In the aftermath of World War II and throughout the early Cold War, the Catholic Church played a significant role in shaping global humanitarian and migration efforts. It dedicated substantial resources to resettlement and welfare of refugees and other migrants. It also sent aid to Eastern Europe, as the archives reveal, for example, to eradicate a typhus epidemic in Moldavia and alleviate hunger in Romania in 1946. This commitment was not purely humanitarian but was also informed by the geopolitical imperatives of the time, particularly the Church’s anti-communist stance and its increasing internationalism.

The Vatican’s consistent support for refugee resettlement aligned with broader Cold War strategies, framing humanitarian aid as both a moral duty and a political act. The Church’s transnational networks provided material and spiritual assistance to anti-communist exiles, as well as to displaced persons residing in camps across Germany and Austria. As has been already established in historiography but can now be understood in a nuanced way with the use of the newly available material, the Vatican also facilitated the escape of Nazi criminals and collaborators from justice via “ratlines”, mostly to the countries of South America.

A Glimpse into the Archives

Often referred to as the Pius XII archives, as it rolls better off the tongue than “the variety of documents pertaining to the pontificate of Pius XII preserved in multiple archives”, these papers extend far and wide beyond Eugenio Pacelli’s biography and his influence on the Church. The archival materials concerning this period are dispersed across several institutions, including the Vatican Apostolic Archive (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano) and the Historical Archive of the Section for Relations with States (Archivio Storico della Segreteria di Stato Sezione per i Rapporti con gli Stati e le Organizzazioni Internazionali). Collectively, they encompass millions of documents—letters, diplomatic cables, internal memoranda, and photographic evidence—much of which touches directly or indirectly on Eastern Europe.

While much of scholarly work focused on World War II and the Holocaust, the post-war years are also now coming into clearer view. Recently published inventories, such as Le “carte” di Pio XII oltre il mito/The “Papers” of Pius XII Beyond the Myth (2023) and the index of the papal nunciature in Argentina (2024), are expanding access to crucial segments of the archives. These include, inter alia, the files on the Pope’s involvement in aid to ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe and documents on Eastern European refugees settling in Latin America with the involvement of Church networks.

The recently accessible archival materials provide a deeper understanding of the Vatican’s interactions with communist regimes in Eastern Europe following World War II. To bring one notable example, the archives shed new light on the Vatican’s fraught relationship with Yugoslavia in the immediate postwar period, as the Holy See sought to maintain a presence in a country rapidly falling under communist control. In early 1945, Pope Pius XII appointed American Bishop Joseph Patrick Hurley as acting papal regent to Yugoslavia, marking an unprecedented step in Vatican diplomacy that brought it closer to the US. 

The files also contain detailed accounts of forced secularization and the systematic surveillance of religious life in Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania, and other countries. Reports documenting the persecution of clergy, religious orders, and lay Catholics by communist authorities abound. The persecution of Cardinals Mindszenty, Stepinac, and Wyszyński are the best known, with Mindszenty imprisoned and tortured in Hungary (1949), Stepinac tried and sentenced in Yugoslavia (1946), and Wyszyński placed under house arrest in Poland (1953), all in efforts by the state to suppress their moral and political influence. The archives give access also to much less publicized stories that still starkly exposed the hostility of the regime towards the Church. One such example is material on the 1951 Bratislava trial of Bishops Ján Vojtaššák, Michal Buzalka, and Pavol Gojdič in Czechoslovakia, who were accused of anti-state activities, espionage, and treason. Buzalka and Gojdic, who both died in prison, were later beatified by Pope John Paul II while the beatification process of Vojtaššák was halted by the allegations of his complicity in the Holocaust in Slovakia. To contextualize these events, historians reach out beyond the Vatican archives in their scrutiny of the relations of Church leaders to fascism during the war and revival of papal anticommunism in the 1980s.

The Vatican’s Anti-Communist Crusade

The post-1945 Vatican increasingly viewed its global mission through an anti-communist lens. Pope Pius XII framed it as a moral and spiritual battle, not merely political. In 1949, he issued a decree against communism, declaring that Catholics who openly professed atheistic communist doctrines would be excommunicated. The archives offer ample evidence of these Cold War struggles, with documentation on support for anti-communist groups in Eastern Europe; approaches towards “patriot priests” who tried to build an alliance between Catholicism and Marxism; assistance to Catholic organizations in exile,; and much more. 

One particularly illuminating source is the documentation concerning the Vatican Radio transmissions. These broadcasts offered news, encouragement and religious programming to Eastern Europe in local languages. Archival records are a resource to assess the influence and importance of these transmissions behind the Iron Curtain. In the 1950s, nuncios and the local hierarchies voiced a lot of criticism against the Vatican Radio. For instance, Hurley wanted it to become a substitute of the priest, but he was disappointed that it did not use its full potential. Still, many Catholic representatives hoped that Vatican Radio could speak in place of the Church of Silence. As journalist Eugenio Bonanata put it, referring more to the period of the pontificate of John Paul II while commenting on a new book on the Vatican Radio: “It is the Radio that speaks in place of the Church of Silence, that brings catechism to children condemned to atheism, that transforms a kitchen table into a hidden altar from which to listen to Mass.”

Another dimension is the Vatican’s role in strengthening global anti-communist networks by supporting initiatives and organizations that aimed to bolster Christianity as a force capable of containing the spread of communism. In the Archivio Storico one can find examples of how Rome helped sustain diaspora communities intellectually and spiritually. For instance, it was done through encouragement and strengthening the anti-communist message embedded in programmes in Russian and Eastern European studies at Catholic universities in the USA, such as Fordham, a world-renowned Jesuit university at the forefront of the rapid development of Sovietology.

Letters to the Pope

Alongside the high diplomacy and institutional maneuvering lie intensely personal voices. Among the most compelling items are letters from individuals – refugees, dissidents, and everyday believers – writing to the Pope. While the Vatican maintained public neutrality during WWII to preserve its diplomatic position (and as a result faced criticism for its limited public condemnation of Nazi atrocities, in particular persecution of Jews), in the postwar period it took a more active role by promoting peace, aiding refugees, and aligning politically with the West against communism. During and in the aftermath of the war, people wrote to the Pope as a respected moral and spiritual authority, seeking guidance, justice, aid, and support amid widespread suffering and upheaval. These letters often detail lives of hardship and personal struggles of people trying to rebuild their existence after the total war.

One such example, filed in the Vatican Apostolic Archive, is a letter from Jan, a worker from Lublin in Poland, pleading to the Pope for food aid for his family living in poverty, a wife and four small children, two of them at risk of tuberculosis. Another letter, penned in 1947 by a Romanian woman by the name of Ada living in Trieste, asked for help in bringing her parents from Romania to Italy. Similarly, a woman, Helena, in exile in Paris, asked for help for her daughter to flee Czechoslviaka to join her. A Hungarian photographer asked the Pope for a photo camera so he could work again in his studio in Szarvas. 

Rachela, a Jewish woman, penned a desperate plea to reclaim the daughter she had been forced to abandon while fleeing the Germans in Poland. Hiding in the forests with her 15-month-old in tow to evade deportation, she was unable to feed the child during the harsh winter and left it to be found by a Catholic family. “My child was blond, had blue eyes, and a scar on her upper thigh,” she wrote in German, full of anguish and hope to locate her lost child. These testimonies not only shaped Vatican humanitarian efforts but also provide historians with vivid snapshots of lived experience during the early Cold War. 

Towards a new history of the Cold War East

Until recently, much of the scholarly debate around Pius XII focused on his silence regarding the Nazi extermination of Jews and his relations with Nazi Germany, with some earlier critics branding him as “Hitler’s Pope”. These longstanding controversies informed the Pope Francis’s decision to grant scholars access to the records with the hope that “serious and objective historical research will succeed in evaluating in its proper light, with appropriate criticism, the praiseworthy moments of that Pontiff and, no doubt also the moments of grave difficulty, of anguished decisions, of human and Christian prudence.” While those debates remain important, the new research is pushing beyond the polemics. As scholars such as Simon Unger and Nina Valbousquet argue, we are now seeing a shift toward a broader, more nuanced analysis of the Vatican’s global role during this era: “Historians are now venturing beyond the confines of the ‘Pius Wars.’”

The material concerning Eastern Europe is central to this shift. It offers insights into the origins of the Cold War, the interplay of faith and ideology, and the lived realities of people in Cold War Europe. Moreover, it reveals the Vatican not just as a reactive institution but as a proactive global player, attempting to connect Catholics in a divided world.

As more inventories are released and access improves, the Pius XII archives will continue to yield new insights. For historians of Eastern Europe in particular and of Europe in general, these records offer an unparalleled opportunity to explore the religious, diplomatic, cultural  and humanitarian dimensions of the Cold War. They bring into focus not only the Vatican’s strategies and dilemmas but also the voices of those who looked to Rome for solace, solidarity, and survival. For years to come, these immense multilingual archives, with inventories and the majority of documents in Italian, will be a vital resource contributing to writing a new transnational history of the Cold War East.

The examples used in the article come from primary sources in the Vatican Apostolic Archive and the Historical Archive of the Section for Relations with States. This work has been funded by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) under the Grant Agreement No 101106155 (COMREF-VATICAN). I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Marion Dotter, Dr. Elena Serina, Dr Alejandro Mario Dieguez  and Dr. Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ for their valuable feedback and critical input in preparing this article for publication.

Bibliography

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Keyword: Catholic Church, Cold war, Eastern Europe, Vatican archives