IN WHAT looks like a belated exercise in damage limitation, the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X last weekend removed Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson from his position as head of its seminary in La Reja, near Buenos Aires, Argentina.
At the same time, the society also expelled another Holocaust-denying priest, Austrian-born Fr Floriano Abrahamowicz, based in the northern Italian town of Treviso.
For much of the past two weeks, Pope Benedict XVI has faced intense international criticism for his decision to lift the 1988 excommunication of four bishops of the Society of St Pius X, including Bishop Williamson, who has a well-established track record as a Holocaust-denier. Not only Jewish leaders but also German chancellor Angela Merkel have questioned the wisdom of the decision.
For his part, Pope Benedict has expressed his “full solidarity” with the Jewish people, while in a statement issued last week the Vatican not only called on Bishop Williamson to “unequivocally and publicly” withdraw his comments on the Shoah but also claimed that the pope had been unaware of the bishop’s controversial views when he lifted the excommunication.
Over the weekend, Fr Christian Bouchacourt, the Latin American superior of the Society of St Pius, the society founded by conservative French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, announced the removal of Bishop Williamson as head of a seminary he has directed since 2003, commenting: “The affirmations of Bishop Williamson do not in any way reflect the position of our society.”
The society’s Italian leadership expelled Fr Abrahamowicz who had made common cause with Bishop Williamson, saying last week that the Nazi concentration camp gas chambers had only been used for “disinfection” purposes and calling Jews a “people of deicide”.
Yesterday, there were further signs of a major thaw in Catholic-Jewish relations. Firstly, the president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S Lauder met German cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, for a meeting at which the Jewish delegation reiterated the view that denying the Holocaust was “not an opinion but a crime”.
Following the meeting, a satisfied Mr Lauder expressed the hope that Pope Benedict’s May visit to the Holy Land, seemingly in doubt because of this most recent crisis, would go ahead as planned, saying: “This [visit] will be an opportunity to reaffirm the Vatican’s commitment to dialogue with Jews.”
Furthermore, church sources yesterday claimed that Israel’s chief rabbinate, which had pulled out of dialogue two weeks ago, has decided to resume talks and is now expected to attend meetings in the Vatican later this month.
While Catholic-Jewish relations would appear to be on the mend, there remains the thorny problem of what to do with Bishop Williamson. Thus far, the bishop has offered no apology for the substance of his comments on the Shoah, while in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine last weekend he said that he would correct himself only if the historical evidence warranted such a correction, adding that this “will take time”.