Richard Williamson forced to leave South Americancountry over views on concentration camps and number of Jews killed
Richard Williamson, who left Buenos Aires wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses yesterday, arrived at Heathrow airport dressed all in black and wearing a dog collar. Several police officers escorted him through a media scrum, and a photographer was manhandled by police during the jostling. The British-born bishop did not comment and was whisked away in a silver Land Rover.
Williamson had been at the St Pius X seminary in Buenos Aires for five years, but last week the Argentinian government gave him 10 days to leave the country.
Williamson caused outrage with his remarks, which surfaced shortly after the Vatican's recent decision to welcome him back into the Catholic church. He is reported to have claimed in a television interview last month that historical evidence suggested there "were no gas chambers" and that only 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps.
He has since declared himself ready to think again, and in a recent interview with Spiegel magazine, the bishop reiterated that he was prepared to "review the historical evidence". Most historians agree around 6 million Jews were killed under Hitler's regime.
"Historical evidence is at issue, not emotions. And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time," the disgraced bishop said.
He added that he would test his views not by travelling to Auschwitz but by reading a book on the camp by Jean-Claude Pressac, a former Holocaust denier who revised his views after a visit.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have already condemned Bishop Williamson's views on the Holocaust as "totally unacceptable" and have stressed that the lifting of his excommunication was for unrelated matters. A spokesman for the Catholic bishops conference of England and Wales said he had "absolutely no idea" where Bishop Williamson was going after his arrival in Britain.
He said: "He does not fall into the jurisdiction of any of the England and Wales bishops because he is not in full communion with the Catholic church. He will have to make his own arrangements, whether that is with a Catholic priest or with somebody else. From the hierarchy's perspective, he has got nothing to do with the bishops of this country."
Williamson did have one supporter at Heathrow; Michele Renouf, a socialite turned documentary-maker, said she wanted to represent and support him in getting his views across to the public.
She blamed Germany - which has a Holocaust-denial law - for causing the "scrum of Jewish protests" and said it was a "disgrace" that there could be no debate on the issue. Renouf, who came to Heathrow with her legal team, has become increasingly known in recent years for associating with those who deny the Holocaust. She supported the historian, David Irving, during his trial in Vienna for Holocaust denial. Last year, she helped put together a legal team for an Australian academic, Frederick Toben, after he was arrested at Heathrow airport.
Williamson, who describes himself on his personal blog as a dinosaur, belongs to an ultra-traditionalist religious order that opposes recent reforms by Rome.
The decision to remove the cleric from the seminary was an attempt to smooth over frayed relations with the Vatican, said a spokesman for Williamson's religious order, the Society of Saint Pius X, adding that Williamson's views in no way reflected those of the order.
Williamson is believed to be at the London headquarters of the Society of Saint Pius in Wimbledon, south London, where the Land Rover that took him from Heathrow was parked outside. Two priests who answered the door refused to comment.
Williamson's opinions sparked outrage among Jews and embarrassed the Vatican, which ordered the bishop to publicly recant. The Vatican, along with Williamson's order, claims to have had no prior knowledge of his beliefs about the Holocaust before lifting his excommunication.
The excommunication in 1988 was lifted along with those of three other bishops ordained without Vatican permission by the renegade French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre.
Pope Benedict had made healing the breach between the Society of Saint Pius X and mainstream Catholics one of the chief aims of his papacy. The British bishop had welcomed his entry back into the church as a "great step forward", although he continued to denounce the Vatican as liberal.
"There is still a long way to go before the neo-modernists in Rome, conscious or unconscious, realise – if ever! – how they mistake the faith," Williamson said.
The bishop has sought to prevent his original television interview from being broadcast on the internet, but a German court has rejected his argument.
Lord Janner, the president of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "It would be much better if he was not here, but as a British citizen it cannot be prevented."
Guardian
