Defamation ruling reversed

FRANCE: The European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that a French historian fined for calling the Catholic Church anti…

FRANCE: The European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that a French historian fined for calling the Catholic Church anti-Semitic and partly responsible for the Holocaust had been deprived of his right to free speech.

The court overturned a French court's 1998 ruling that Paul Giniewski had defamed the church by saying that it harboured a deep-rooted anti-Semitism that had "readied the ground where the idea and realisation of Auschwitz sprouted."

He was originally convicted of defamation after a group run by a former far-right-wing politician sued him for publishing what it said were "racially defamatory statements against the Christian community".

The court, the final appeals body in European rights cases, said Mr Giniewski himself admitted that his attack might shock or offend some people.

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The court reiterated that such views did not in themselves preclude the enjoyment of freedom of expression.

Mr Giniewski made the comments in a newspaper article analysing The Splendour of Truth, a 1993 encyclical by the late Pope John Paul discussing the foundations of Christian morality.

He said many Christians thought a church doctrine that Christianity had replaced Judaism's covenant with God had led to anti-Semitism in church scriptures and, indirectly, to Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz. - (Reuters)