A GROUP of leading academics is calling on the Scottish Government to intervene in a controversy over the Catholic Archives in Edinburgh.

Historians Professor Dauvit Broun, Professor Thomas Owen Clancy, Dr Jenny Wormald, and Professor Ewen Cameron have already attempted to force the issue on the Parliament's Public Petitions Committee, calling for the Church to reverse plans to split the archives, dating back to Mary, Queen of Scots, and move on claims they are deteriorating.

Although the committee has responded claiming the bid was outside its remit, it has advised those behind it to enrol the support of sympathetic politicians if they want a debate on the issue in Parliament.

One of those behind the petition has written to Michael Russell, Education Secretary, Fiona Hyslop Culture Secretary, and former Labour leader Iain Gray, while Struan Stevenson, Conservative Member of the European Parliament for Scotland, has taken up the issue, writing to both the Vatican and Ms Hyslop.

The academics and supporters want the Government to step in and review the plans to split the archive until a new archbishop is appointed to the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Writer Michael Turnbull, who has been at the centre of the campaign on the archives, said: "The historians have been kept in the dark by the Scottish bishops since last December when rampant mould seriously damaged large numbers of documents at Columba House, home of the Scottish Catholic Archives.

"Since there has been no effective communication from the bishops on the matter, the historians fear the worst and have taken the decision to approach the Minister for Culture, the MSPs, MEPs and the Vatican, asking them to intervene, in what increasingly looks like a cultural catastrophe, by helping to provide a forum where a new way forward for the Scottish Catholic Archives can be collectively discerned."

The collection, which includes correspondence with Oscar Wilde, has been at the centre of a row between some of Scotland's most prominent historians and the Church over the past few years. They were angered by a decision, signed off by Cardinal Keith O'Brien, to allow the collection of more than one million artefacts to be broken up, and much of it transferred to Aberdeen University.

The Church has long maintained Columba House, the grand building in which the archive was housed, was "not fit for purpose".

The recent petition, also instigated by the Council of the Scottish History Society, the Scottish Catholic Historical Association and the Society for Scottish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, said it "arises from deep concern about the recent treatment of the archives, beginning with the decision to split the collections and move the archival material broadly dating from before 1878 to the library of the University of Aberdeen".

It adds: "There has been opposition to this decision for several reasons, including the lack of consultation with users of the archives and with any of the major Scottish historical bodies – division of an archive collection such as the Scottish Catholic Archives is contrary to internationally accepted archival protocols and should be avoided where possible – and disregard for the work of researchers, particularly postgraduate students whose careers have been disrupted by the mismanagement of the archives since the signing of the agreement with the University of Aberdeen."

However, in correspondence with Parliament, the signatories to the petition have been advised to "involve sympathetic MSPs directly, rather than invoking the public petitions procedure".

In a letter to Professor Broun, the clerk to the Public Petitions Committee said a "better way of achieving this [a debate on the issues raised] would be for an MSP to enrol an appropriate motion and perhaps seek a debate in the Parliament".