Word: williamsons
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...reconciliation with a breakaway church group, Pope Benedict XVI has ordered one of the bishops of the arch-traditionalist Lefebvrite movement to publicly retract his statements denying the Holocaust. The Vatican issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying the Pope had not been aware of the claims by Richard Williamson - one of four Lefebvrite bishops brought back into the fold late last month after 20 years of excommunication - that Nazi gas chambers didn't exist and no more than 300,000 Jews died in concentration camps...
...Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to the episcopal [bishop] functions of the Church, must in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions regarding the Shoah," the statement said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. (See pictures of Holocaust survivors sharing their memories...
...sudden ultimatum, which came less than 24 hours after unprecedented public criticism was voiced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, raises more questions than it answers. Why did it take so long? How will Williamson specifically and the Lefebvrites in general react? Could this scuttle the Pope's high-stakes gambit to end the excommunication of the breakaway bishops, leaving him permanently damaged both inside and outside the Vatican walls? But perhaps the starting point would be to ask: Who is steering the ship for Benedict during what is turning into the most turbulent crisis of his papacy...
...Mosque in Istanbul. Earlier in the week, a Lefebvrist priest in Treviso Floriano Abrahamowicz, reportedly rekindled the holocaust-denial controversy when he was quoted as saying, "I know gas chambers existed at least to disinfect, I can't say if anybody was killed in them or not." (On Friday, Williamson posted a letter online apologizing to the Pope for his "imprudent phrases." The Vatican offered no offical response...
...stand back and you realize it isn't just a matter of bad timing," one Vatican insider said, referring to the coincidental Williamson interview. "You scratch the surface and you quickly see [the Lefebvrites'] attitudes are not quite right. You're making a most important gesture, and at what end? They're just not ready...