The controversial ultra-conservative
Catholic group, the Pius Brotherhood, has ordained four new priests
just two days before Bishop Richard Williamson’s appeal against his
conviction for Holocaust denial.
Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Saint Pius X Society, a Swiss-based
Catholic fraternity, ordained the four men at a seminary in Zaitzkofen,
near the Bavarian city of Regensburg, on Saturday.
Williamson’s appeal was to be heard in Regensburg district court on Monday.
Priests ordained by the rebellious arch-traditionalist brotherhood are not recognized by the Catholic Church.
The controversial brotherhood was stripped of ordination rights by the
Vatican after they refused to recognise a raft of modernising changes to
the church in the late 1960s.
Among the reforms rejected by the organization was a declaration called
Nostra Aetate, which ended a Catholic Church doctrine by which the Jews
were held responsible for killing Jesus.
In 2008 Williamson, who is British, gave an interview to a Swedish TV
station during which he questioned the historical details of the
Holocaust.
The interview, which was aired in Sweden in January 2009,
took place at the Pius Brotherhood seminary at Zaitzkofen.
"I believe that the historical evidence, the historical evidence, is
hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas
chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," Williamson said in the
interview.
"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 a
gas chamber."
In April 2010 he was found guilty of Holocaust denial, a hate crime in Germany, and fined €10,000.
Pope Benedict XVI severely criticised for reversing the excommunication
of Williamson and three other Saint Pius X Society bishops in 2009 -
announcing his decision just days after the interview was broadcast.
The pope stressed that he had been unaware of Williamson's remarks when
making his decision, insisting it was "intolerable" to dispute the facts
of the Holocaust.