The director of the Vatican press office, who last week said that Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos should have known about Bishop Richard Williamson’s views of the Holocaust, has clarified his comments.Father Federico Lombardi said, “We continue having the greatest confidence and gratitude for the difficult and complex work that the cardinal has done and is doing to reweave this very delicate relationship and to reconstruct the unity of the Church, a task that he carries out with a specific commission from the Pope.”
“With the Holy Father, Cardinal Castrillon has a relationship of total trust, because he is one of his closest collaborators,” he added.
“This delicate issue of the regrouping of the Church above all with the traditionalist groups that have separated is a situation that the Pope has felt very deeply, because he experienced it firsthand.”
Father Lombardi emphasized that the cardinal has been dealing primarily with Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the Society.
He added, “It was not just the Pope who was not informed about the positions of [Bishop] Williamson regarding the Shoah.
Bishop Williamson, let us recall, is generally in Argentina. It is understandable that Cardinal Castrillón himself would not be informed [of his position] and less so of the recent interview with Swiss television.”
Meanwhile Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos himself reminded a Colombian radio interviewer that the Pope's intent was to heal a schism, not to enter a debate about the Holocaust. The Pontiff, he said, has no sympathy whatever for Holocaust deniers; but in addressing the excommunications of the SSPX bishops he was concentrating on a different matter.
(Significantly, the Colombian cardinal used the word "schism" in reference to the break between the SSPX and the Holy See. Leaders of the traditionalist group have always rejected the notion that the SSPX is in schism, and in the past Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos said that their argument was "valid"-- although he stopped short of endorsing it.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: CC)