LONDON (RNS) A Holocaust denying Catholic bishop whose readmission by the Vatican has sparked international outrage arrived in Britain on Wednesday (Feb. 25) after his turbulent expulsion from Argentina.
Four police officers hastily bundled Bishop Richard Williamson into a car and to a waiting contingent of fellow clergy from the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).
Williamson, a British native, flew into London’s Heathrow airport from Buenos Aires after the Argentine government had given him 10 days to leave the country because of anti-Holocaust remarks he had made in an interview with Swedish television.
In the interview, the bishop claimed historical evidence was “hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”
Williamson added that “I believe there were no gas chambers” and that “I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps but none of them in gas chambers.”
Argentina called his comments “deeply offensive” and “insulting;” the bishop departed amid a scuffle at the Argentine capital’s airport.
Neither the bishop nor SSPX members who met him the airport would say what Williamson was doing in the country or where he would be staying.
British socialite and documentary-maker Michele Renouf told journalists that she was there as a “standby” to offer the bishop assistance from a legal team that last year defended Frederick Toben, an Australian who was arrested in England for denying the Holocaust.
A British judge later ruled the arrest warrant for Toben was invalid.
The controversy that has surrounded the breakaway bishop for years was rekindled in January when Pope Benedict XVI, in an attempt to repair the rift with the Catholic Church’s ultra-traditionalists, lifted a 20-year-old excommunication decree imposed on Williamson and fellow schismatic SSPX bishops.
Benedict has since insisted that Williamson will not be recognized as a bishop in the Catholic Church unless he recants his Holocaust views.
