Mick Hartley

The readmiitance of Bishop "no-Jews-killed-in-gas-chambers" Williamson into the bosom of the Church seems to have opened up a can of worms:

A priest in an ultraconservative society recently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI has defended a bishop in the group and joined him in expressing doubts about the Holocaust.

While making more cautious remarks than Bishop Richard Williamson, the Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz echoed, in an interview published yesterday by an Italian daily, the prelate's doubts that Jews were gassed during World War II.

"I know gas chambers existed at least to disinfect, I can't say if anybody was killed in them or not," Abrahamowicz told La Tribuna di Treviso, a newspaper in northern Italy.

Contacted by phone in Treviso, Abrahamowicz said the report of his interview was accurate, but declined to comment on his remarks.

Benedict lifted Williamson's excommunication and those of three other members of the Society of St. Pius X last week as part of his efforts to bring back into the Church the group, which opposes many of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. […]

The priest, who heads the society in northeast Italy, said in the interview he did not doubt that 6 million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, but added that the figure may have been exaggerated.

He compared the Holocaust to the Allied bombing of German cities in World War II and the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Abrahamowicz also referred to Jews as being the people of God who then became the God-killing people – a remark that contradicts the Vatican II teaching that Jews as a people cannot be held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.