Lessons learned: Studying past prepares people for the present, archivist says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Regardless of what people might imagine, archivists are the happiest people on earth, said the prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archives, Bishop Sergio Pagano. “Even if people say we work amongst cobwebs and dust, that we are library mice,” it does not matter, he said, because “we know how things went in the past so well that when we see how things are going now, we are not disappointed; we smile because we can see that it’s the same thing over and over.”

Lessons learned: Studying past prepares people for the present, archivist says