LONDON — A British bishop whose denial of the Holocaust led Argentina to order him out of that country returned to England today.
Richard Williamson, a bishop with the conservative Society of St. Pius X, was told to leave Argentina or face expulsion amid criticism over a television interview in which he said no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.
The controversial bishop had been excommunicated 20 years ago, but Pope Benedict XVI last month lifted the excommunication decree on Williamson and three other bishops.
The four had been excommunicated because they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent — a move the Vatican said was an unacceptable violation of the pope’s authority.
The recent lifting of the decree by the pope, which angered many Jews and others worldwide, came days after Williamson was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying historical evidence indicates there were no Nazi gas chambers and that a maximum of 300,000 people died in concentration camps in the Holocaust.
Most historians believe about 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League also found records of speeches and letters by Williamson when he was based at a seminary in Winona, Minn. He was quoted in one 1989 speech as saying that “Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism.”
The Vatican has ordered Williamson to retract his comments before he can be admitted as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.
Williamson has apologized for causing distress to the pope but has not recanted.
A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, who declined to be named in keeping with the group’s policy, said he had no idea what Williamson would do next. The spokesman said that the conference had no relationship with Williamson.
The Society of St. Pius X in Great Britain declined comment today.
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