Responding to growing protests, the Vatican has firmly distanced itself from a prelate who denied the Holocaust and demanded that he recant his positions before being fully admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican also said in a statement on Wednesday that Pope Benedict XVI did not know about Bishop Richard Williamson’s views when he agreed to lift his excommunication and that of three other ultraconservative bishops on Jan. 21.
The furor over the German pope’s decision has been spreading, forcing the Vatican to make a remarkable turnaround and publicly call the British bishop to order.
The statement was issued by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the pope to make a clearer rejection of Holocaust denials, saying there had not been adequate clarification from the Vatican. Further condemnations of Williamson had come from top German Church officials, Jewish groups and the head of the US bishops conference.
In a sign the Vatican had misread the mood even among its own officials, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was quoted in an Italian Catholic newspaper on Tuesday as saying he considered the matter closed.
The controversy gave a rare look at the cracks in the Vatican’s facade of unity and raised questions about the advice the pope receives and his access to information. Papal aides say Benedict, a former university professor and theologian, receives a daily news summary and occasionally watches television.
“This was absolutely a matter that was bungled at the highest levels of the Vatican,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “If they Googled the name ‘Bishop Williamson,’ they’d find out he was a Holocaust denier. This did not require advanced research at the Vatican Library or Oxford.”
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