The pope, as the sovereign of Vatican City, owns the material held in the archive until his death or resignation, with ownership passing to his successor. The archive also contains state papers, correspondence, account books, and many other documents that the church has accumulated over the centuries.
Pope Paul V separated the Secret Archive from the Vatican Library, where scholars had some very limited access, and the archive remained closed to outsiders until the late 19th century, when Pope Leo XIII opened the archive to researchers, more than a thousand of whom now examine some of its documents each year.
