On view will be the acts of Galileo's trial for heresy as well as the letter from members of the British Parliament asking Pope Clement XII to annul the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon -- one of the key events that led to England's break with the Roman Catholic Church.

Organizers said some of the previously unseen documents concern the papacy of Pope Pius XII, accused by some of failing to do enough to stop the Holocaust. Those documents normally wouldn't have been released for another three or four years since Vatican librarians slowly catalog the archives in chronological order and are still working on Pius' papacy....