(January 31, 2009) It is a morally grave matter when a priest or bishop, in communion
or not with the Church, denies the Holocaust and the extermination of millions of
Jews at the hands of the Nazis, says the Vatican spokesman. In an editorial for "Octava
Dies," a weekly program of the Vatican Television Centre, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi
criticized statements made by Bishop Richard Williamson in which he denied the extent
of the Holocaust and the use of gas chambers to kill millions of Jews during World
War II. Bishop Williamson was one of four prelates of the Society of St. Pius X who
were illicitly ordained to the episcopate by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. Last
Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication for the four bishops, which
caused an uproar among Jewish leaders. Father Lombardi, quoting the Pontiff's statement
Wednesday after his weekly catechesis, said he hoped "the memory of the Shoah moves
humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the human
heart." According to the director of the Vatican Radio and Television Centre, the
Pope "not only condemned all form of forgetting or denying the tragedy of exterminating
six million Jews, but remembered the dramatic questions that the events plant in the
conscience of every person and believer." Father Lombardi continued: "Before this
double mystery -- of the horrible power of evil and the apparent absence of God --
the only response of the Christian faith is the passion of the Son of God. Those who
deny the Holocaust don't know anything about the mystery of God, nor of the cross
of Christ.”