The Pope has ordered the release of thousands of WWII-era documents held by the Catholic Church to the general public.

In a move that comes as the Vatican reckons with its record during the Holocaust, 2700 files containing Jewish pleas for help will be available to view online for the first time ever.

According to the Vatican's foreign minister, making the files accessible “will allow the descendants of those who asked for help to find traces of their loved ones from any part of the world."

The files are part of the Pope Pius XII archive, released to historians in 2020, in a move that many Jewish groups praised as the Vatican appeared to be confronting its actions during WW2.

Many of the thousands of pleas for help contained in the archives were from non-practising Jews, who'd been baptised Catholic and turned to the Vatican for help as levels of Nazi persecution grew.

Historian David Kertzer told The Times: “One can read hundreds of pages of these documents without finding a single case of a Jew helped by the Vatican....Those helped were overwhelmingly baptised Jews, while typically Jews requesting help were turned down."

Earlier this week, the Vatican's official paper dismissed the “worn-out view that Pius XII cared only about baptised Jews” as a "cliche."

The release of these documents to the public has reignited the fierce debate over the Vatican's legacy during the Holocaust.

Pius XII, who served as Pope from 1939-1958, never publically condemned the Holocaust, despite the Holy See having had sources who painted a reliable picture of the progress of the Final Solution through the war.

Pius had previously been the Vatican's ambassador to Germany and later oversaw the signing of a Concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933.

Pope Francis has previously stated that there has been “some prejudice and exaggeration” in the historical and public debate surrounding Pius XII’s legacy.