The Swiss Guards wave you through St. Anne's Gate, the business entrance into the Holy See. USA Today reports.

The bustle of tourists fades behind the high wall, replaced by the burbling of a fountain as your guide, dapper Belgian publisher Paul Van den Heuvel, leads you into a hidden courtyard behind the papal residence.

On a far wall are metal doors carved with scenes celebrating Egyptian papyrus, medieval manuscripts and monks' scrolls. Through the doors, a plaque on the wall greets visitors to the VATICAVM TABVLARVM, Latin for Vatican records office.

"Welcome to the Vatican Secret Archives," says archivist Enrico Flaiani, head of conservators at the venerable institution. "I will be showing you many things," he adds with a quiet smile.

Founded in the 1600s by Pope Paul V, sacked by Napoleon, returned, moved and open only to scholars since the 1880s, the Vatican Secret Archives, the Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum, serve as repository for the diplomatic records of pontiffs. Records stretch back to at least the 800s; the parchment Liber Diurnus, a circa-eighth-century codex containing legal language for consecrating monasteries and addressing dignitaries, is the oldest record in the archive. The most intriguing of its records are the subject of this year's The Vatican Secret Archives, which was published by Van den Huevel's VdH books and is the reason for the tour.

"The book presents some of the most fascinating of the documents in the archives," says Van den Heuvel. The volume holds lavish photos of the halls and artwork of the archives, forbidden to the throngs treading to the Vatican City each year. Only scholars are allowed in, and only to the reading room. The tour has been opened only to small groups of journalists in the past year to promote the book.

Read the rest here.

What deep dark secrets and conspiracies has the church kept hidden for centuries? Does the Vatican have knowledge that the crucifixion was a fraud? What does the Vatican know about UFOs and alien visits to Earth? Is there a secret chapter of Satan worshipers hidden within the Vatican? This is a short preview of the full-length 60 minute documentary.

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