Pope Francis has renamed the priceless archives, which span over 12 centuries; the Vatican announced they would now be called the Vatican Apostolic Archives.
Among the documents are letters about King Henry’s VIII’s requests to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn that led to the English Church’s 1534 split with the Catholic Church in Rome.
They also hold the originals acts of the 1633 trial of astronomer Galileo by the Roman Inquisition which condemned him for heresy for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun.
In practice, the archives haven’t actually been secret for a while, as with most state archives they are open to researchers after a period of time.
The removal of the word “secret” removes any potentially “negative nuances” from the Latin word “secretum” which the pope said in a decree was closer to “private” or “reserved” than “secret” when the archives first got their name around 1610.
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