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Unsanctioned

Really the Pope was only trying to make amends with the traditionalists in the Catholic Church. But then came the scandal. One of the four bishops of the Fraternity of Pius X whose excommunication Benedict XVI lifted at the end of January was a denier of the Holocaust.

Shortly before he was re-incommunicated[1] by the Pope on 24 January the British bishop Richard Williamson had denied the existence of the gas chambers and the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in an interview with the Swedish television station SVT 1. Williamson was one of four bishops illegally consecrated twenty-one years ago by the conservative French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who refused to recognise the Second Vatican Council. The Pius Fraternity rejects the opening of the Catholic Church to other faiths and to ecumenical dialogue and they continue to celebrate mass according to Latin rituals.

Critics of the Pope ...

The re-incommunication of the four bishops was problematic, the Spanish daily El País wrote on 27 January, both because of their conservative attitudes and because of Williamson's denial of the Holocaust. The decision suggested that Benedict XVI was engaging in "a strategic move of rapprochement with the extreme Right of the Catholic Church", it wrote. "To give in to deniers of the Holocaust in order to overcome the schism in [the Church]" demonstrated precisely the kind of "moral relativism" that the Pope had always condemned. The reaction of the left-wing liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung on 26 January was similar. "The Pope's reconciliation with a repugnant anti-Semite" was alarming, the newspaper said. The Pope had failed to recognise that as "the head of more than a billion Catholics" he was not operating in a "vacuum of dogma and church law". Whatever ground Benedict XVI hoped to win back on the right wing of the Church by re-incommunicating Williamson he "stood to lose in the centre”.

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his blessing during a Vespers prayer in Rome, January 2009. Photo: AP/Pier Paolo Cito

The Belgian daily De Morgen even warned on 28 January of anti-Semitism in the Vatican. Williamson's re-incommunication indicated that "Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites have a place at the top of the Catholic Church” and strengthened "the authority of a bishop who more than 60 years after the barbarous events apparently intends to rewrite history and once again dehumanise the Jews", Dirk Verhofstadt, the author of a book about Pius XII during the Holocaust (Pius XII en de vernietiging van de Joden (2008)), wrote.

Marco Politi called in the left-wing-liberal daily La Repubblica on 28 January for the Pope to make a public statement: "Now the Pope must speak". He said an answer was expected from the head of the Catholic Church as to "whether a Catholic bishop is allowed to deny the Holocaust and above all whether such a denier can be a bishop and assume other functions within the Church".

... and defenders

The Polish daily Polska was one of the few voices that dared to defend the Pope. "Benedict XVI's courageous decision in this matter" was the only way "to save the Church from a further schism" the newspaper asserted on 28 January. The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung emphasised the same day that the Pope had not rehabilitated Williamson as a Holocaust denier. "Williamson was only rehabilitated as a normal Catholic, not as a bishop appointed by the Pope, and certainly not as a Holocaust denier". What is more the Vatican had stressed that when he re-incommunicated Williamson the Pope had not known about his anti-Semitic statements.

There was even a conspiracy theory which held that the Pope had been the "victim of a plot", the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on 5 February. According to the report the French journalist and expert on the Pius Fraternity, Caroline Fourest, had arranged the Williamson interview on Swedish television in order to embarrass the Vatican. In other words a "cynical lesson" in media politics.

A wave of protest

This did not, however, stop the public protesting loudly against the Pope's decision. The press reported many people leaving the Church, and the left-wing tageszeitung even appealed to Catholics to do so, printing an application form on its front page. The Süddeutsche Zeitung suggested on 2 February that the Pope "may have known nothing about Bishop Williamson's anti-Semitic tirades", but "in view of the thorough scrutiny to which the life of any dignitary is normally subjected" this was difficult to imagine. An increasing number of public figures, particularly in Germany, the home of the Pope, called for the Vatican to make a clear statement on its attitude to the Holocaust - most recently German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It was "not surprising" that the Germans were sensitive on this issue the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita wrote on 4 February. One could understand the Chancellor's concern that "a Pope from Bavaria of all places was being accused of hampering the dialogue between the Catholic Church and Judaism". However, it went on, it would not be fair to say that the Pope had avoided the issue of Holocaust denial. At his general audience on 28 January Benedict XVI. had spoken of his "solidarity with the Jews" and about "the importance of remembering the Shoah". Furthermore, it said, one should remember his visits to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also thought Merkel's intervention was inappropriate. The Pope, it said, had spoken out on many occasions against any denial or playing down of the Holocaust and did not need "to be prompted by Berlin". The Süddeutsche Zeitung, on the other hand, defended the Chancellor – also on 5 February. It was not a matter of "interfering in the affairs of the Catholic Church", but of the Pope violating Germany's civil religion one of whose central tenets was "'never again' – the federal republic as a state-organised antithesis to the Nazi dictatorship". A Pope "who comes from Germany, who arouses the animosity of Jewish communities in Germany and takes a lenient attitude to a Holocaust denier and helps him to become prominent" has "failed to understand something fundamental". The Austrian daily Der Standard argued in a similar vein on 6 February, saying Merkel had an obligation to speak out "because Benedict XVI is a German”. When he was consecrated as Pope "there were references particularly in the Anglo-Saxon press to his membership in the Hitler youth”. That "at a time when anti-Semitism is rising again in Europe a German Pope of all people has taken a Holocaust denier back into the ranks of the Catholic Church" has "far-reaching consequences beyond the walls of Rome", it said.

A loss of face

Despite his good intentions the Pope's reputation had suffered, wrote the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat on 4 February: "Benedict wanted to patch up the divides in the Church, not cast doubt on the genocide against the Jews", but he had made a mistake, particularly as the leadership of the Catholic Church has been accused of "indifference towards the Holocaust” during the 1940s.

Critics like Vito Mancuso writing in the daily La Repubblica on 26 January wondered, however, whether the Pope had not actually made a cool calculation in using a Holocaust denier to restore the unity of the Church, or whether – as the Süddeutsche Zeitung conjectured on 28 January - he was not simply an "old fogy" who was turning the Vatican into an ivory tower of dogma and refusing to open up the Church to the outside world. But many observers were unequivocal that the Pope was harming the Catholic Church and its dialogue with Judaism. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant on 6 February called it unfathomable that a German Pope "could show so little sensitivity for relations with Judaism". It was not acceptable that Benedict XVI should place his "blinkered notion of Roman Catholic unity ... above respect for other religions", the British business newspaper the Financial Times likewise commented on 6 February.

Damage limitation

In a statement by the Vatican the director of the Pope's press office Federico Lombardi initially stressed on 3 February that Benedict XVI had repeatedly clearly condemned the Holocaust and that the same applied to Williamson's views. A day later, on 4 February, in an attempt to limit the damage, the Pope then asked Williamson to revoke his views "unequivocally and publicly". "So the current Pope is no Nazi", the Belgian daily De Standaard commented with satisfaction on 5 February. But he is a "sentimental conservative", who "in his eagerness to haul the followers of the old rituals back on board" accepts the collateral damage without major problems. ... thus indirectly playing down the significance of the Holocaust. Whatever the case the Pope had clearly shown "that Rome is open to public, including Catholic, opinion", the French Catholic daily La Croix wrote on 5 February.

Meanwhile, the Italian daily La Stampa saw the Williamson affair as a lesson for the Vatican and as "a warning to all men of the Church to be on guard against self-centredness. It said it would be good "if they listened to the voices and arguments of those who are outside the Church". The British Catholic weekly The Tablet described the affair on 7 February primarily as a "communications debacle" of the Vatican's public relations machine led by an "overworked and overstretched Jesuit priest", but stressed that the gaffe would have further "unintended consequences" - for the unity of the Church, the dialogue with the Jews and the Vatican's proclaimed neutrality in the Gaza conflict.

A Pope like Obama

Really it would all be so simple if the Catholic Church had a Pope like Barack Obama, wrote the German theologist Hans Küng, whose license to teach was withdrawn by the Vatican in 1980, on 2 February in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A Pope like Obama would "state clearly that the Roman-Catholic Church is in a profound crisis" and introduce reforms. Then everything would be alright.

Gaby Mahlberg

Gaby Mahlberg, born in 1976 in Euskirchen, is a freelance journalist and editor at euro|topics. Before that she worked as sub-editor for dpa News International ...
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