Pope Criticized Over Second Priest's Holocaust Denial (Update1) <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aPV4Lyh3gCh4&refer=germany>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aPV4Lyh3gCh4&refer=germany
By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Alisa Odenheimer Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- <http://www.vatican.va>Pope Benedict XVI again came under fire from members of the Jewish community after a second priest publicly questioned whether Jews were exterminated in Nazi camps and said gas chambers were used merely to "disinfect." "I know that gas chambers existed to disinfect," Father Floriano Abrahamowicz, a priest in the northern town of Treviso, told local newspaper <http://tribunatreviso.gelocal.it/>Tribuna in an online interview published today. "But I can't tell you if they killed anyone or not." Abrahamowicz's comments come less than a week after Bishop Richard Williamson said there was "no historical evidence" that the Holocaust ever happened, straining relations between the Vatican and Jews. Both offending priests belong to the ultra-conservative Society of Pius X that was readmitted into the Catholic Church on Jan. 24. "I think the Church realizes what a tremendous ruckus has been caused," Oded Wiener, director general of Israel's Chief Rabbinate, said in a phone interview in Jerusalem. For the first time since 2000, when they established a dialogue, the supreme Jewish religious government body may not meet with Vatican officials as scheduled in March, he said. Unless Williamson recants his statements "it will be very difficult for the Chief Rabbinate's Commission of Israel to continue its dialogue with the Vatican as before," Wiener wrote in a Jan. 27 letter to Cardinal <http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Walter+Kasper&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>Walter Kasper. The pope, distancing himself from the priests' statements, said yesterday that the Shoah, the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis, "should be a warning for all against forgetting, denial and reductionism." Williamson, one of four hard-line traditionalists who broke with the Church in the 1980s, sparked the controversy last week when a Swedish television station aired an interview in which he said "historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy by Adolf Hitler." The timing of the reversal of Williamson's excommunication and the Swedish broadcast were "absolutely unrelated," and the pope doesn't share Williamson's views, Vatican spokesman <http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Federico+Lombardi&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>Federico Lombardi reiterated this week. Williamson, 68, was excommunicated in 1988 after being consecrated without papal permission by an archbishop who opposed Church reforms and founded his own fraternity in response. Williamson's remarks "do not reflect in any way the position of our society," Bernard Fellay, the current leader of the fraternity, wrote in a letter to the pope that the Vatican distributed on Jan. 27 to reporters. To contact the reporters on this story: <http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Flavia+Krause-Jackson&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>Flavia Krause-Jackson in Rome at <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]; <http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Alisa+Odenheimer&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>Alisa Odenheimer in Jerusalem at <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] Last Updated: January 29, 2009 11:02 EST <*}}}>< <http://astore.amazon.com/halthekin-20>Catholic on Amazon <*}}}>< <*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Holy Postage <*}}}>< <*}}}><<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Kingdom!<*}}}>< + "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war" - Bl. Mother Teresa + --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Please note that I do not send or open attachments sent to this list. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Catholics on Fire" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Catholics-on-Fire May the blessing of Jesus and our Blessed Mother be with you -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
