The Italian branch of a Catholic sect with a history of anti-Semitism
held a funeral on Tuesday for a convicted Nazi war criminal, despite
protests from Jewish groups and the local mayor.
Crowds packed the streets outside San Pio X Church in Albano, a small
town south of Rome, chanting "Executioner!" and kicking the hearse
carrying Erich Priebke's body as entered the church compound on Tuesday.
A funeral Mass was celebrated for Priebke but his casket was kept
outside, according to a priest from the church who requested anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The "absolution" rite, which includes a prayer for clemency for the
deceased, was also given outside the church, in the courtyard inside San
Pio X's compound.
Priebke's body is now being held in a military airport outside Rome.
The church funeral plans for Priebke sparked an outcry in the United States.
"Erich Priebke was a monster," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
"He does not deserve the dignity and respect of a proper church
burial. His body should be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea,
without further ceremony.”
Priebke, a former SS captain sentenced to life in prison for his role in an Italian massacre in 1944, died on Friday.
Priebke was convicted by Italian court in 1998 for helping organize
the execution of 335 men and boys in retaliation for attacks on German
troops. The former Nazi was unrepentant, denying the Holocaust in his final statement, according to the Associated Press.
After World War II, Priebke escaped to Argentina, where he lived for
nearly 50 years. He had planned to be buried near his late wife there,
according to his lawyer, Paolo Giachini. But Argentina's foreign
minister said it would not accept the remains.
Burying Priebke in Rome has proved nearly as difficult.
The Diocese of Rome said in a statement that Priebke's lawyer was
asked to hold a "small, private" funeral in the Nazi war criminal's home
rather than in a church.
"The prayer for the deceased was not denied," the diocese said in a
statement, "but rather a different manner for the ceremony was decided."
Pope Francis is the titular head of the Rome diocese but has little
involvement in its daily affairs.
Priebke's lawyer rejected that proposition, according to the diocese.
Instead, the conservative Society of St. Pius X stepped in, agreeing
on Tuesday to hold a funeral Mass in their church for the former Nazi.
The society has no official status within the Catholic Church.
The Italian chapter acknowledged in a statement Tuesday that Priebke
was "controversial" but said he had already been convicted by Italian
courts and has the right to a Christian funeral.
"A Christian who has been baptized and who has received the
sacraments of the Confession and the Eucharist, regardless of what have
been his crimes and sins, as he dies reconciling with God and with the
Church has the right to have a Holy Mass celebrated at his funeral," the
group said in a statement.
The society also said that it "reaffirms our repudiation to any form of anti-semitism and racial hatred."
But the Society of St. Pius X, whose leaders were once excommunicated
from the Catholic Church for ordaining bishops without Vatican
approval, has a long history of controversial statements about Jews.
Its founder, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, sharply disagreed
with the Roman Catholic Church's softened stance toward other faiths,
including Judaism, after the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65. It also
objected to other modernizing reforms such as celebrating the Mass in
local languages.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Society of St. Pius X is "mired in anti-Semitism."
“The Society of St. Pius X never fails fail to shock," Foxman, a
Holocaust survivor, said Tuesday. "First, they denied the Holocaust, and
now they’re denying the acts of a perpetrator.”
"Jews are described in SSPX documents as being cursed by God for the sin of deicide" (killing Jesus), the ADL says in an online report.
"Jews are accused of being in control of world financial and cultural
institutions and of plotting to create a 'world empire' or obtain
'world dominion,'" the ADL report continues.
Under Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church tried to reconcile with
the ultra-conservative society, lifting the excommunication of several
bishops and allowing for wider celebration of the Mass in Latin, a
favored practice of SSPX.
One of those bishops, Richard Williamson, was later found to have
denied elements of the Holocaust, including its death toll of 6 million
Jews.
Williamson was convicted of Holocaust denial in a German court and expelled from the society in 2012.
Former Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2009 that the Society of St. Pius X
"does not have canonical status in the Catholic church" because of
doctrinal, not disciplinary reasons.
It doesn't look like the breach will close any time soon.
The Bishop Bernard Fellay, the society's Swiss-born leader, reportedly said on
Saturday in Kansas City, "The situation of the church is a real
disaster, and the present Pope is making it 10,000 times worse.”