Pope reinstates controversial bishops

Pope Benedict XVI has reinstated four excommunicated bishops who belonged to a traditionalist society of the church founded by the deceased archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. One of the bishops, British-born Richard Williamson, recently denied the Holocaust. The liberal daily Corriere del Ticino criticises the Pope's decision. "The reinstatement of the revisionist British bishop Richard Williamson, who had the temerity to claim that there were no gas chambers and that 'only' 300,000 Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps, has left the Jewish authorities speechless. ... It won't make any difference that the Vatican has stressed that the reintegration of Monsignor Williamson is under no circumstances an endorsement of his anti-Semitic ideas. The reconciliation with Marcel Lefebvre's four bishops also dramatically raises the taboo question: Is Benedict XVI trying to undermine the Second Vatican Council? ... Lefebvre called into question this Council when he described freedom of worship as a perversity ... and bemoaned the separation of the Ten Commandments and human rights in the Catholic Church."

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