The Vatican states that Benedict XVI has already been very clear, but Chancellor Angela Merkel slams as inadequate the Vatican clarification on the reintegration of Bishop Richard Williamson who was earlier excommunicated. Williamson had explicitly declared doubts that the Jews were, indeed, mass executed during the Holocaust.
Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, had said that “the condemnation by the Pope of the negationist statements could not be more clear and apparent from the context that it was referring to the position of Mgr. Williamson.” He adds that “the Pope’s thought on the subject of the Holocaust has been expressed very clearly in the synagogue in Cologne on 19 August 2005, the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 28 May 2006, in May 31, 2006, and on January 28.”
In a press conference in Berlin, the German Chancellor responds that, from her point of view, the explanations from the Vatican are not yet adequate. So far, all the clarifications have proved insufficient, said Merkel who demands that the Vatican and the Pope must state very clearly that there is no denial of the Holocaust.
The current raging issue is a sensitive one in Germany because Holocaust denial is considered a crime in the country. There has been an outrage lately among Germany’s Roman Catholic leaders when the German-born Pope reinstated the British-born bishop who expressly doubted the facts of the Holocaust.
The Nazi Holocaust has indeed cast a very long shadow.
