Vatican 'knew of bishop's Holocaust denials'
Published: 23 Sep 09 16:32 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/22250/20090923/
The Vatican was aware of statements by a rebel bishop in which he questioned the existence of the Nazi gas chambers before it decided to lift the bishop's excommunication, according to a Stockholm bishop.
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Stockholm bishop Anders Arborelius said Wednesday in a statement posted on the diocese's website that he was aware of negationist remarks Williamson made to an investigative news programme filmed by Swedish public television SVT in November 2008 and which aired on January 21, 2009.
"I believe there were no gas chambers.... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," Williamson said in an interview on the Uppdrag Granskning programme.
"There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!," Williamson, consecrated bishop by the breakaway conservative Society of St Pius X (SSPX), added.
Arborius wrote on Wednesday: "The content of the interview with Richard Williamson ... was sent to the Vatican in November 2008, forewarning that the programme with the Holocaust denial would be broadcast on January 21, 2009."
The pope lifted Williamson's excommunication on January 24.
"We, at the diocese office in Stockholm, as we always do in matters of the Church, had forwarded the information we had about SSPX and Richard Williamson, including what we knew about the content in the interview Uppdrag Granskning had with him, to the Vatican," Arborius said.
"I want to underline that forwarding information to the Vatican is pure routine, and not something exceptional for this case," he added.
Swedish television was to broadcast a follow-up to its January programme on Wednesday, including an interview with Arborelius.
Williamson was one of four excommunicated bishops whom the pope agreed to take back into the Church in January 2009 to try to heal a split with traditionalist Roman Catholics, who rejected the Vatican's liberal reforms of the early 1960s.
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On 9th December 1931, the Münchener Post published a front page open question to Adolf Hitler, asking what the term final soulation mean't, from his internal NASDAP document called 'The Jews in the Third Reich'. It laid out exactly how Hitler intended to remove the rights of Jews in stages, through Nurnberg type laws, eventually leading ot a proposed *Final Solution'. The Vatican was in full knowledge of this. The article in the Münchener Post was actually picked up by major newspapers around the world and make a joke of. The joruanlists from the Münchener Post fought Hitler with pencil and paper from 1921 to there complete destruction in 1933 by Hitler.
Cardinal Aloysius Viktor Stepinac of croatia, oversaw according to the former Yugoslavic government the murder of 700,000 Jews, Serbs and others, under the Catholic Church's convert or die policy in Croatia from 41 to 44, supported by the Nazi's. The process has started to make Stepinac a saint for that.
At the end of the war, the Vatican set up Rat Lines to help Nazi war criminals to escape justice. The Franciscan Order and the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta were heavily involved in that as they were in initially assisting Hilter to gain credibility in the international stage. They even hid Ante Pavelic in the Vatican itself.
your facts and numbers are totally off. The former Yugoslav communist regime is known for the invention of many propaganda stories especially aimed at making their oppostion look as the devil itself. As such, the story of Stepinac is very much far away from the truth. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloysius_Stepinac
Your support of revisionism of history in favour of nazism is noted.
The Vatican has invented a lot more propaganda stories than anyone else.
Stepinac went to jail in Yugoslavia for his crimes after the war, for good reason.
Croatia was significantly larger from 41 to 44. It encompassed all of present day Croatia and most of Bosnia, where most of the killing occurred.
Dinaricman, you can excuse nazi killers all you want. They are still killers, the exact same as communist killers.
The Catholic Church was up to its neck in it, from start to finish. The Catholic Church helped to spirit 30,000 Ustashe war criminals from Croatia to South America and Spain.
Convert or Die did occur under Stepinac. His priests and nuns did kill with a rosarie in one hand and a dagger in the other. That is why some of them were hung after trial still wearing there robes.
I have the same opinion of marxists as I have the nazi's, holocaust deniers and excusers.
Do not forget that a war was going on and that there were groups actively trying to dismantle Croatia and her church even before the Ustashe came to power. Everyone is a killer when politics gets involved. How many dead Iraq's so far. Democratic governments are not immune either.
Stepinac did the best he could considering what was going on in the world. He was a man and most importantly a Croatian hero. Even Tito could not find reason to execute him and he was released. God bless him and our holy church.
Tito did not execute Stepinac because he was under pressure from the UK and particularly USA and Vatican not to. The Catholic Church set up martyr committee's to campaign to allied governments for his release.
He was a sick genocidal murderer, as was his protege's Miroslav Filipović and Ante Pavelic.
As for the Catholic Church, it has blood on its hands from from most areas of combat in WW2, as well as covering up child abuse all over the planet.
Your adherance to dogma, has blinkered you from the truth. The fact that you want to give religeous blessing to a mass murderer is beyond my comprehension.