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BUENOS AIRES,Argentina-The bishop whose rehabilitation by the Vatican sparked outrage because of his denials of the Holocaust has been removed as the head of an Argentine seminary, his superiors said Monday.The ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, which is trying to reconcile with the Vatican, announced it had dismissed British Bishop Richard Williamson(picture left) as director of the La Reja seminary and distanced itself from his views.Williamson's views about the Holocaust 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.Lefebvre founded the Society of St. Pius X in 1969 in opposition to the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, particularly its outreach to Jews.In an interview broadcast Jan. 21, Williamson told Swedish state TV that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust and only 200,000 to 300,000 were killed,not 6 million. "The statements from Monsignor Williamson do not in any way reflect the position of our congregation," the Rev. Christian Bouchacourt, South American superior for the Society of St. Pius X in Buenos Aires, said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "A Catholic bishop cannot speak with ecclesiastical authority except on matters concerning faith and morality. Our brotherhood does not claim any authority over other questions."Williamson also questioned the Holocaust while serving as rector of the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn., between 1988 and 2003.According to the Anti-Defamation League, Williamson declared in a 1989 speech that "Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism.""There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies," Williamson said in the speech at Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in Sherbrooke, Quebec, the Jewish group said in a report posted Jan. 26 on the Internet.He was quoted as asserting that "the Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new state of Israel."The bishop also wrote a rector's letter on Sept. 1, 2002, blaming "Judeo-Masonry" for the two world wars and claiming that Jews were bent on world domination, according to the seminary's Internet archive of monthly messages to friends and benefactors.In the rector's letter for Nov. 3, 1991, Williamson noted he had gotten a strong reaction when he said in the past that "certain famous `Holocaust gas-chambers' in Poland cannot have served as gas-chambers at all."The comment came in a complaint about women's liberation and media acceptance of the Holocaust."Truly,"I believe in the Holy Ghost and the Communion of Saints" has been replaced by"I believe in the Holo Caust and the Emancipation of Women!" he wrote...Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.
On the Net:
ADL report:
On the Net:
ADL report:
2002 letter: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/storytext/lt_argentina_vatican_jews/30901920/SIG=128pqgjco/*http://www.stas.org/publications/letter/2002/September/September.shtml
1991 letter:
1991 letter:
By DEBORA REY, Associated Press Writer
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As in the days of Noah...
