As Bishop of Rome, the pope (papa in Latin) holds the highest authority in the Catholic Church. One of the primary ways the Holy Father teaches, governs, and encourages the faithful is through official documents such as apostolic constitutions, bulls, encyclicals, exhortations, apostolic letters, and motu proprios.

These documents are published on the Vatican website , where they are maintained by the Dicastery for Communication, the Vatican Library, and Vatican Internet Services.

While most Vatican documents are readable on mobile devices, many older documents were created using outdated web standards and can be difficult to navigate. Finding a specific document often requires knowing both the pope who issued it and the document's Latin title.

PapalLetters.org makes these documents easier to discover by providing a searchable index of papal writings.

Documents are lightly reformatted to improve readability on phones, tablets, and modern browsers. No content is removed, altered, or abbreviated. All text is sourced directly from the Vatican website, ensuring that you are always reading the current official version.

This project began with the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which currently form the foundation of the collection. Additional papal documents will be added over time.