Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COMREF-VATICAN (Knocking on the Vatican's Gates. Refugees, the Holy See, and the Spectre of Communism, 1945-1958)
Reporting period: 2023-08-01 to 2025-07-31
The COMREF-VATICAN project, “Knocking on the Vatican’s Gates: Refugees, the Holy See, and the Spectre of Communism, 1945-1958,” investigated the crucial but previously overlooked role of the Vatican Relief Commission in aiding and resettling European refugees after World War II and during the early Cold War. With the opening of new collections at the Vatican Apostolic Archives, this project capitalized on a unique opportunity to access, for the first time, primary documents detailing how the Holy See responded to mass displacement, helped manage refugee crises, and built alliances with those fleeing communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The overarching objective was to provide a new understanding of postwar humanitarianism, demonstrating how the Vatican combined spiritual, material, and political forms of assistance while shaping the broader international refugee regime.
From August 2023 through July 2025, the Researcher undertook extensive archival fieldwork in Rome, Paris, Vienna, and across international digital archives. The main work involved identifying and analyzing previously untapped Vatican records—correspondence, reports, personal petitions, and policy documents—then triangulating these with archives from international organizations such as the International Refugee Organization (IRO), United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and UNHCR. Special attention was paid to the voices, agency, and lived experiences of refugees, particularly women, in their negotiations with both church and secular authorities. The research further integrated perspectives on gender, class, and ethnicity, revealing how these social factors influenced access to aid and roles in faith-based humanitarian work. Innovative methodologies included close reading of refugee letters, focus on bottom-up histories, and dissemination through academic and public channels.
The project’s main achievements include the submission of two peer-reviewed journal articles, with the article “Refugees and the Vatican: Rebuilding the Social and Gender Order Through Refugee Assistance in the Early Cold War” to appear in Diasporas. Circulations, migrations, histoire in December 2025 (in open access). For non-specialist readers, the Researcher contributed to widely read New Eastern Europe with the article “The Vatican and the Eastern Bloc: What the Vatican Archives Can Reveal About Cold War Europe”. Results were also disseminated through thirteen presentations at major international conferences and workshops, a project website, and public lectures. The researcher created a dedicated research blog to share insights from fieldwork in the Vatican archives and to provide updates on developments in the field: https://www.katarzyna-nowak.com/research-blog(opens in new window). Blog posts were published also via other outlets, including an in-depth blog post for Vienna Research Blog on the Global History of Refugees: “Vatican’s Refugee Assistance, Ethnic Germans, and Navigating Identities in the Aftermath of World War II”. Extensive outreach and engagement targeted academic and general audiences, with resources made openly accessible in line with open science best practices. Furthermore, the Researcher organized a workshop on transnational archival research with the focus on the newly available fonds from the Vatican archives, bringing together early career researchers, established scholars, and archivists.
The project’s main achievements include the submission of two peer-reviewed journal articles, with the article “Refugees and the Vatican: Rebuilding the Social and Gender Order Through Refugee Assistance in the Early Cold War” to appear in Diasporas. Circulations, migrations, histoire in December 2025 (in open access). For non-specialist readers, the Researcher contributed to widely read New Eastern Europe with the article “The Vatican and the Eastern Bloc: What the Vatican Archives Can Reveal About Cold War Europe”. Results were also disseminated through thirteen presentations at major international conferences and workshops, a project website, and public lectures. The researcher created a dedicated research blog to share insights from fieldwork in the Vatican archives and to provide updates on developments in the field: https://www.katarzyna-nowak.com/research-blog(opens in new window). Blog posts were published also via other outlets, including an in-depth blog post for Vienna Research Blog on the Global History of Refugees: “Vatican’s Refugee Assistance, Ethnic Germans, and Navigating Identities in the Aftermath of World War II”. Extensive outreach and engagement targeted academic and general audiences, with resources made openly accessible in line with open science best practices. Furthermore, the Researcher organized a workshop on transnational archival research with the focus on the newly available fonds from the Vatican archives, bringing together early career researchers, established scholars, and archivists.
COMREF-VATICAN’s findings go beyond the state of the art by demonstrating the Vatican’s unique and complex contribution as a humanitarian actor, particularly its support for those excluded by secular aid agencies. The project integrated the framework of institutional history with a bottom-up approach, or people’s history, allowing for the agency and voices of refugees from various backgrounds to become a part of historical narrative and public understanding of this historical era. The research revealed how the Holy See’s relief efforts intertwined with anti-communist strategies and restoration of social and gender orders in postwar Europe. By integrating voices of ordinary refugees and focusing on faith-based agendas, the project challenges traditional institutional histories, offering fresh perspectives on migration, displacement, and international cooperation. This approach has significant socio-economic and societal relevance, especially as Europe confronts renewed migration challenges and seeks to promote inclusive, historically informed policy responses by providing timely evidence on the intersections of humanitarianism, migration, and geopolitics relevant for European migration and asylum policy.