Excerpt:
Pope Benedict XVI has reinstated four bishops from an archconservative breakaway wing of the Roman Catholic Church ...Reaction here. Excerpts:
... British-born Bishop Richard Williamson, one of those Benedict is bringing back into the fold, denies that the Nazi Holocaust ever happened.
"I believe there were no gas chambers," Williamson said. The bishop, who has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past, declared that the historical evidence was "hugely against" the accepted belief that close to 6 million Jews were systematically exterminated as part of Adolf Hitler's Final Solution. Williamson claims that no more than 300,000 Jews died during World War II.
Benedict’s actions are also reviving his old nickname when he was Cardinal Ratzinger — that of the “Panzerkardinal”, known for his hardline conservatism as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. ...
Other Catholic-Jewish tensions include plans by the Pope to beatify Pius XII, the wartime pontiff accused by critics of failing to speak out in defence of Jews. The Vatican insists that Pius helped the Jews while avoiding public statements that would have made matters worse, and has demanded the removal of a plaque attacking him at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
