The head of an ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholic fraternity said Monday that some time must be allowed for one of its bishops to retract his denials of the Holocaust."We should give him time as he wants to look into the issue seriously to give a sincere and true response," Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the Society of Saint Pius X, said in remarks published in Swiss newspaper Le Nouvelliste.
Richard Williamson is "working on the question and he will shoulder his responsibilities," said Fellay.
Williamson was ousted as the head of an Argentine seminary on January 31, 10 days after Swedish television broadcast an interview in which he said Nazis never used gas chambers and that only 300 000 Jews at most died in the Holocaust.
Fellay has sought pardon from Pope Benedict XVI for Williamson's denials and has banned the British prelate from making any statements on political and historical issues.
He said no date has been fixed for a discussion with the Vatican since the pope's decision to lift Williamson's excommunication.
The discussions "could be long... not because of us, but because of the reaction of the church, notably on our positions on Vatican II," he said.
Williamson and Fellay were among four bishops whom the pope welcomed back into the flock in an attempt to heal a decades-old split with traditionalists who did not accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s.
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(Source: AFP)