Does the Vatican need a Freedom of Information Act? The Act supposedly gives us British citizens the right to know what information the government is holding about us, or indeed about other matters, with certain safeguards. It does have its disadvantages, I suppose: time-wasters can make a lot of work for civil servants in this way; however, freedom of information does mean that government is held accountable to the people, and it does help do away with the culture of secrecy that often seems to attach itself to government. But why might the Vatican need to embrace a Freedom of Information Act? I can think of several reasons. First of all, the current “Vati-leaks” scandal. According to this recent headline, the supposed whistleblower  claims that the Vatican is “ruled by [an] 'omerta' code of silence”. This sort of language, which equates the chief organs of Church governement with a criminal conspiracy, is pretty maddening for normal Catholics like myself. But if there were freedom of information, it would be much harder to claim that the Vatican was addicted to cover-up. Then there is the matter of the Vatican refusing to release the secret files it holds on paedophile priests. You know the secret files? You can read about them here, in an article dating from earlier this month. The trouble with these secret files, which are often mentioned in internet comments, is that they are secret, and as such, may not exist at all. Freedom of information requests, I assume, have to be specific; and a freedom of information act would mean an end to this misleading insinuation that the Vatican is sitting on mountains of information which may not, in fact, exist. If this were not enough, there is the endless stream of newspaper articles dealing with the Vatican’s refusal to release more supposed secret archives which someohow or another will reveal the truth about Pope Pius XII, the Nazis and the Second World War. The trouble is that the Vatican secret archives are not really secret. They have been the subject of an exhibition (hardly the best way to keep a secret, I would have thought) and they are regularly opened to scholars who are doing research. Disappointingly for conspiracy theorists, Wikipedia describes the Secret Archives as follows: