Off topic, but I just have to say, as a fellow proud Catholic, that this whole \”secret archives\” jargon that they always use is damaging to the Church's reputation.  I hate hearing how the Catholic Church is so secretive (and this article references that very point), when in reality, when they say secret, they mean unreleased.  We already knew about Ghengis Khan and Katherine of Aragon.  Regardless, good find, and thanks for the resource!

Melissa said:

Off topic, but I just have to say, as a fellow proud Catholic, that this whole “secret archives” jargon that they always use is damaging to the Church's reputation.  I hate hearing how the Catholic Church is so secretive (and this article references that very point), when in reality, when they say secret, they mean unreleased.

---

I think people are just misunderstanding a previously legitimate use of the word 'secret'. Language changes, and meanings evolve. Henry VIII was said to have married several of his wives 'secretly'. Nothing nefarious was being implied, however. One of the meanings of 'secret' was 'not public', or 'not previously announced to the public', or, as in this case, 'unreleased'. That nuance of meaning has pretty much been lost over the centuries since then.

I've seen people similarly misunderstand 'private'. I've seen (not here) people saying various historical sources are unreliable, with their example being something along the lines of “Anne Boleyn was said to have been executed privately, but there were hundreds (thousands) of people there, so this source is obviously wrong.” But in fact, 'private' at the time meant 'not open to the general public', so an execution inside the Tower walls (Tower Green) would have been private, whereas an execution outside the Tower walls (Tower Hill) would have been a public execution.

(Sorry. I'm a language geek as well as a history geek.)