(© Daily Telegraph, London)-

Thursday February 05 2009

Pope Benedict XVI bowed to intense pressure yesterday by announcing a British bishop who has questioned the Holocaust must recant his views before being fully readmitted to the Church.

The Vatican said Bishop Richard Williamson must "in an absolutely unequivocal and public way" renounce his denial of the Nazi death toll and use of gas chambers, in a humiliating display of damage control.

The Church has been trying to draw a line under the affair since the Pope announced late last month that he had decided to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson, a Cambridge- educated maverick who runs a church in Argentina.

For days, officials insisted Pope Benedict XVI had nothing more to say on the matter, after publicly expressing his "solidarity" with the suffering of the Jews.

But the 81-year-old German Pontiff had declined to refer to Bishop Williamson by name and critics said his denunciation of Holocaust deniers was too vague.

The Pope was forced to address the issue more explicitly because of the worldwide outrage caused by Bishop Williamson's claim that the Nazis did not use gas chambers and that they killed at most 300,000 Jews, rather than the six million accepted by most historians.

In its statement, the Vatican said that when Benedict lifted the excommunication on Bishop Williamson on January 24, he was not aware of the British bishop's denial of the Holocaust.

"Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to the episcopal functions of the Church, must in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions regarding the Shoah," the Vatican said.

Bishop Williamson's positions on the Holocaust were "absolutely unacceptable and firmly rejected by the Holy Father," the statement said.

It came as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, took the unprecedented step of criticising the Pope over his decision to lift the excommunication.

The cardinal, in a letter to Dr Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, expressed his deep regret at the effect of the Vatican's move.

In the letter the cardinal wrote: "I am writing to express my dismay at the effect of the Vatican decree... Specifically I naturally deplore the comments made by the Englishman, Rev Williamson, in his denial of the full horror of the Holocaust.

"His statement and views have absolutely no place in the Church and its teaching."

Damage

Dr Sacks, in his reply to the cardinal, warned that the episode had done "great damage" to relationships between the Jewish and Catholic faiths.

The Vatican had failed to anticipate the furore that would result from lifting the excommunication of Bishop Williamson, a member of the ultraconservative Catholic faction, the Society of Saint Pius X.

The Pope's decision to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson after he was excommunicated 20 years ago was condemned by Jewish groups, senior Catholics, and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.