Pope Reinstates Holocaust Denying Bishop

The London Times reports that "Pope Benedict XVI’s rehabilitatation of a British bishop who denies that millions of Jews died in Nazi gas chambers has alarmed Catholics who fear it risks dealing a fatal blow to the inter-faith dialogue promoted by his predecessor." The Bishop Richard Williamson was ex-communicated in 1998 by Pope John Paul after an unauthorized consecration by the group known as the Society of Saint Pius X, lead by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. That the current Pope would reinstate this Bishop is shameful. This Bishop is a Jew-hater of the ugliest sort, and for a Church with a long and bloody history of anti-Semitism, removal of ex-communication is ignorant. This move by a man that many people call "the Holy See" is an utter display of reckless unholiness and moral blindness. This is a Bishop that should be condemned by the Pope and given no religious legitimacy. He is certainly not someone deserving of "rehabilitation."

Given the fact that the current Pope is a former member of the Hitler Youth, regardless of whether it was by his own free will or not, one might have thought he would be a little more cautious in making any moves that would even appear anti-Semitic. Yet he reinstated Bishop Williamson who was interviewed in November, and that interview aired just last Wednesday on Swedish Telivision. Williamson agreed with the "most serious" Holocaust revisionists who he says have concluded that "between 200,000-300,000 perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber." He said, "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers." He seems like he would have been the perfect speaker and participant in Mahmoud Ahmadenijad's Holocaust deniers conference.

The Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish human rights body, said: "The Pope's decision to welcome back such a hater into the Church lends moral credence to deniers of history's worst crime. In addition to Bishop Williamson's Holocaust denial looms the unchanging virulent anti-Semitism of the Society of Saint Pius as a whole."

The AFP also reports that "uneasy relations between the Vatican and Israel have been further strained by plans to declare Nazi-era Pope Pius XII a saint" despite criticism of his inaction during the Holocaust.


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