Nazi Pope Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier

Former Hitler Youth and World War II German army member, Nazi Pope Benedict XVI has yet again shown that he is beyond merely insensitive towards Jews in particular in this instance. As regular readers know, I hold Benedict XVI in great disdain - contempt might be a better word, in fact - and view him as a fraud and co-conspirator in the sex abuse scandal cover up. Now, the sinister head of the Roman Catholic Church has rehabilitated traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson who has made statements denying that gas chambers existed under the Nazi regime and who has claimed that at most 300,000 Jews perished. Here are some highlights from a New York Times article:

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict Saturday rehabilitated a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust, despite warnings from Jewish leaders that it would seriously harm Catholic-Jewish relations and foment anti-Semitism. The Vatican said the pope issued a decree lifting the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops who were thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church in 1988 for being ordained without Vatican permission. The four bishops lead the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), . . .

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One of the four bishops, the British-born Richard Williamson, has made a number of statements denying the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, as accepted by mainstream historians. In comments to Swedish television broadcast Wednesday, he said "I believe there were no gas chambers" and only up to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, instead of 6 million. . . . Williamson said: "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."

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Asked about Williamson's comments, chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said they were "totally extraneous" to the lifting of the excommunications. "This act regards the lifting of the excommunications, period," Lombardi told reporters. "It has nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person, which are open to criticism, but are not pertinent to this decree."

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"For any Catholic clergy to embrace the anti-Semitic Holocaust denier is obscene," said Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States. "It would be an insult to Catholic-Jewish relations and the memory of the millions of Jews who perished because they were Jews."