Historical Archive of the Section for Relations with States

The Archive preserves the historical documentary inheritance of the Secretariat of State's Section for Relations with States and International Organizations and its institutional predecessors. Its official portal identifies several archival fonds and series, including records of the former Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, international organizations, personal papers, and documentary groupings arranged by pontificate and diplomatic subject.^[1]

These records illuminate the Holy See's relations with civil governments, concordats and negotiations, the diplomatic activity of papal representatives, international organizations, and the Church's response to political and humanitarian events. An archival record witnesses what an office received, recorded, or did; it must still be interpreted according to provenance, context, completeness, and the distinction between a working document and an act of the Magisterium.

The Archive admits qualified researchers under published regulations. Access requires an application, institutional or scholarly credentials, approval, and observance of the Archive's rules for reservation, handling, consultation, reproduction, and citation. Material may be supplied digitally or in original form according to its period and preservation requirements, and access to particular records may be limited for legal, administrative, technical, or conservation reasons.

The regulations require precise archival citations identifying the archive, fonds, pontificate, series, position, file or volume, and folio as applicable. This discipline preserves the chain from a scholarly assertion to the document supporting it. A catalogue description or a digitized image is not a substitute for identifying the archival unit from which evidence comes.^[2]

The Historical Archive is an institution within the Secretariat of State's diplomatic section. It is not another name for the whole Secretariat of State, the Apostolic Archive, an apostolic nunciature's local archive, or the current registry through which active diplomatic business is conducted. Historical Archive of Relations with States and Secretariat of State Historical Archive are useful shortened names when the context remains clear.

The Holy See's Curia directory lists the Archive separately while nesting it under the Secretariat of State. That presentation expresses both truths at once: the Archive has a distinct public identity and research function, and it remains institutionally related to the section whose historical records it preserves.^[3]