The Pope has admitted fallibility over the Vatican's handling of a Holocaust-denying bishop and has vowed to make full use of the internet to make sure the Holy See is not caught out again.Pope Benedict's move to lift the excommunication of the English bishop Richard Williamson and three others first emerged on the web and was swiftly picked up on by newspaper websites and blogs. When the Holy See was engulfed by a storm of protest, the Pope and his Cardinals claimed they had not known of Bishop Williamson’s views. However, The Times had already published a story detailing Bishop Williamson’s interview with Swedish television, where he claimed that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that fewer than 300,000 Jewish people died in the Holocaust instead of the true figure of six million. In an attempt to make amends today, the Pope wrote to all bishops worldwide admitting that mistakes had been made. This had allowed a gesture that had been intended as one to further Christian unity to be misrepresented, he said in his letter. He pledged to make the Holy See more aware of how useful the internet can be in future. The Pope, who is due to visit Israel soon, described the affair as an "unforeseeable mishap" and thanked Jewish leaders for helping him defuse it. In a pastoral letter to Roman Catholic bishops around the world, the Pope said that his action in lifting the excommunication of four ultra-conservative bishops had been "a considerate act of mercy" toward prelates who had not been "legitimately" ordained. The four, including Bishop Williamson, were ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the arch conservative Society of St Pius X, who was excommunicated for refusing to accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The Pope said that the "misunderstanding" had been overcome "with the help of our Jewish friends", who had helped to "re-establish an atmosphere of friendship and trust". They had understood that he had in no way meant to question the "reconciliation between Christians and Jews" which was one of the main points of Vatican II, and which had been one of his own personal objectives "from the beginning of my theological work". The full text of the Pope's letter will be issued tomorrow, when he is due to receive a delegation of Israeli rabbis in a resumption of a dialogue suspended by the Israeli side because of the Williamson affair. In the letter he said he was "saddened" to find that even some Catholics — "who ought to know better how things are" — had used the episode to attack him "with hostility". Both inside and outside the Church the "discussion" had reached a "vehemence which has not been experienced for some time", with an "avalanche of protests" wrongly accusing him of wanting to turn the clock back and reverse Vatican II, the pontiff said. Andrea Tornelli, a papal biographer and the Vatican correspondent of Il Giornale, which leaked the letter, said it was "articulate, beautiful, humble and at the same time powerful". He said the Pope had wanted to "clarify" the row and draw a line under it. The two mistakes the Pope admits to were the failure to pay close attention to the internet but also a “not sufficiently clear” means of managing the lifting of the excommunications, meaning that it was widely misrepresented. He also makes clear that there is still no canonical recognition of the Society of Saint Pius X which could take place only after the society recognises the documents of the Second Vatican Council. He details organisational changes in the Vatican, including connecting more closely the pontifical bodies dealing with the issue. In a nod to traditionalists, many of whom have reservations about the liberalisations of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, the Pope said that Lefebvrists could not expect to "freeze" the magisterial authority of the Church in 1962 when the council began. But supporters of the innovations must understand that Vatican II brings with it "the whole doctrinal history of the Church.” His priority was "to make God present in this world and to open to men the access to God” in in a world in which God has disappeared from the horizons of men. His mission to welcome the Lefebvrist bishops back into the fold had “at heart the unity of believers”.
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(Source: TTUK)