Karène Sanchez Summerer participated to the conference War and Genocide, Reconstruction and Change: The Global Pontificate of Pius XII, 1939-1958 that took place from the 14th to 16th of June 2021 at the German Historical institute in Rome and Ecole française de Rome.
In March 2020, the Vatican has opened its archives for the pontificate of Pius XII. Long-awaited within the scholarly community, these new sources allow historians to address a whole range of topics that extend beyond Eugenio Pacelli’s biography and relate to greater questions of global politics as well as twentieth-century social, cultural and economic history. This pontificate stands amidst the ‘Age of Extremes’, which forced Catholics to situate themselves in relation to conflicting ideologies, totalitarianism, democracy, and modernity. Although a period of accelerating secularisation, the pontificate also witnessed the re-emergence of the Catholic Church as an influential global force. The conference gathered historians who work on Catholicism in the context of broader global events and aiming at forming an international group of scholars who will stay in contact whilst doing archival research in the Vatican over the next decade>, and at establishing an agenda for future research.
The public round table to which Karène took part discussed the diverses challenges of the opening of these archives.