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Argentina orders Holocaust-denying bishop out
The traditionalist bishop whose denials of the Holocaust embarrassed the Vatican was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days. The Interior Ministry said it had ordered Richard Williamson out of Argentina because he had failed to declare his true job as director of a seminary on immigration forms and because his comments on the Holocaust "profoundly insult Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying a historic truth."Williamson's views created an uproar last month when Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication and that of three other bishops consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as part of a process meant to heal a rift with ultraconservatives. The flap led the Vatican to demand that the British clergyman recant before he can be admitted as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. It also prompted the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Lefebvre, to dismiss Williamson as director of the La Reja seminary in Argentina and to distance itself from his views. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had no comment on the Argentine action. Although Williamson has been in Argentina since 2003, the government's secretary for religious affairs, Guillermo Oliveri, said immigration officials only realized he had made an undeclared change of jobs when the controversy hit the press. But Oliveri made clear the Holocaust uproar played a key part: "I absolutely agree with the expulsion of a man residing in our country following his statements (denying) one of the greatest human tragedies." Posted by: Fred 2009-02-20 |
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