Argentina boots the Holocaust-denying bishop

Anti-"Modernist" Pope Pius X

Cristina Fernández' government is kicking him out and wishing him good riddance: El Gobierno expulsa de la Argentina al obispo que negó el Holocausto Clarín 19.02.2009.

Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo gave Bishop Richard Nelson Williamson 10 days to leave on his own or be expelled. One of the grounds is the "public notoriety" Williams has incurred "by his anti-Semitic declarations". The government's statement said that his Holocaust-denial statement that he spouted on Swedish television "profoundly attack Argentine society, the Jewish people and all of humanity."

According to the government, being a Jew-hater isn't his only departure from Christian ideals. They claim he's been lying about his reason for being in the country, claiming to be an administrative employee of a group called "La Tradición" but really has been acting as the head of the renegade seminary in Moreno of the Levebrist Society of St. Pius X.

The namesake of that reactionary Catholic Society, Pius X (1835-1914), Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the first Pope to be canonized as a saint. But the distinguishing feature of his papacy (1903-1914) was his bitter campaign against "Modernism". Richard McBrien in Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (1997) writes:

Although Pius X was canonized a saint in 1954, his pontificate stands as one of the most controversial in the modern papacy. He assumed a relatively critical posture toward modern democratic governments and led a sometimes cruel and internecine campaign against Catholic theologians, biblical scholars, and historians (lumping them all under the umbrella of Modernism), from which the Church did not begin to recover until the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

And it's the ultra-traditionalist devoted admirers of that Pope that the current Pope Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) wants to restore to good standing within the Church. Disgusting.

Tags: anti-semitism, argentina, catholic fundamentalists, holocaust denial

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