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During World War II, thousands of petitions written by Jewish people reached the Holy See. In a long-term project financed by the evz Foundation and the German Foreign Office, these letters and all other documents relevant to the respective cases will be published in a critical online edition.This paper presents the project’s main research questions, priorities, and approaches. It also puts forth initial hypotheses based on select examples. The paper first examines the petitioners’ backgrounds and the contents of their requests. In these appeals, they asked for items such as passports, visas, letters of recommendation, money, hideouts, food parcels, or details on deported family members. Moreover, the different paths these letters took within the Curia as well as the Vatican’s decision-making processes are reconstructed. Particular attention is paid not only to possible anti-Semitic comments, but also to decidedly pro-Jewish comments in the memos on the operational level. Additionally, it examines how the Pope himself was involved—which cases were presented to Pius XII and which ones were not brought to his attention? Another key question is whether the Church made distinctions between baptized Jews versus non-baptized Jews. Finally, it explores how these new sources can be connected to other major databases like those from Yad Vashem and the USHMM.