An apology from a bishop who denied the Holocaust wasn’t good enough, the Vatican said, adding that he must repudiate his views if he wants to be a Roman Catholic clergyman.
The statement by Bishop Richard Williamson “doesn’t appear to respect the conditions” the Vatican set out for him, the Reverend
Federico Lombardi, a spokesman for the pope, said on Friday.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praised the Vatican in a statement for “standing firm and not permitting a person who believes that the Nazi Holocaust is a lie to have any role in the church.”
In an interview broadcast last month on Swedish state TV and in previous letters and speeches, Williamson denied 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, saying about 200,000 or 300,000 were murdered. He said none was gassed.
Williamson apologized for his remarks on Thursday upon his arrival in his native Britain after being ordered to leave Argentina. He said he would never have made them if he had known “the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise.”
But he didn’t say he had been wrong or that he no longer believed what he had said.
On Friday, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said Germany could issue a European-wide arrest warrant on hate crimes charges for Williamson since the Swedish TV interview was conducted in Germany.
State prosecutors in Regensburg, Germany, have opened a preliminary investigation into whether Williamson broke German laws against Holocaust denial.
His remarks prompted widespread outrage among Jewish groups and others. They also embarrassed the Vatican since they were broadcast just days before the Holy See announced it was lifting Williamson’s excommunication and that of three other bishops.
The four, members of the traditionalist Society of St Pius X, had been excommunicated after being consecrated as bishops without papal consent in 1988.
In his statement on Friday, Lombardi said that Williamson’s comments were not addressed to the pontiff or to the Vatican’s Ecclesia Dei commission, which has been dealing with the Society of St Pius X ever since its bishops were excommunicated.
Rather, Williamson issued a statement that was carried by the Zenit Catholic news agency and posted on the society’s British Web site and its news agency, www.dici.org.
In it, Williamson said he was only giving the opinion of a “non-historian” during the Swedish TV interview. He said that opinion was “formed 20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available, and rarely expressed in public since.”
Jewish groups were also not impressed with his apology.
“This is another sham statement that doesn’t recant any of his earlier remarks about the Holocaust,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL national director and a Holocaust survivor. “Bishop Williamson must unequivocally acknowledge the full extent of the Holocaust and recognize the fact of the existence of the gas chambers.”
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
SANCTIONS: Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Therese Kayikwamba Wagner called on the EU to tighten sanctions against Rwanda during an event in Brussels The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has accused the EU of “an obvious double standard” for maintaining a minerals deal with Rwanda to supply Europe’s high-tech industries when it deployed a far-wider sanctions regime in response to the war in Ukraine. Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs Therese Kayikwamba Wagner urged the EU to levy much stronger sanctions against Rwanda, which has fueled the conflict in the eastern DR Congo, describing the bloc’s response to breaches of the DR Congo’s territory as “very timid.” Referencing the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said: “It is an obvious double standard
RSS