Collaboration protocol to promote the use of the Vatican archive and library by Portuguese researchers

On 4 December, a Protocol of collaboration between the Portuguese State and the Vatican Apostolic Library and Vatican Apostolic Archives was signed, aiming at facilitating and supporting the access of Portuguese researchers to the documental collection of the Vatican Apostolic Library and Vatican Apostolic Archives, through the annual granting of two biannual scholarships to Portuguese researchers by Camões- Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua Portuguesa. 

The signature took place, in digital form, from Lisbon and the Vatican City, with the Portuguese State represented by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Teresa Ribeiro, and the Vatican institutions by D. José Tolentino de Mendonça, Cardinal Archivist and Librarian of the Holy See. Monsignor Agostinho da Costa Borges, rector of the Portuguese Institute of St Anthony in Rome, and Paulo Fontes, director of the Centre for the Study of Religious History of the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP-CEHR), as co-signatories of the aforementioned Protocol, as well as the Apostolic Nuncio in Lisbon, Monsignor Ivo Scapolo, also participated.

Within the framework of this cooperation, the UCP-CEHR will select the researchers who will be awarded the Fernão Mendes Pinto fellowships, awarded by the Camões Institute, and the Portuguese Institute of St. Anthony will support their installation in Rome during the fellows' stay.