International Herald Tribune, France
VATICAN CITY: The traditionalist bishop whose denials of the Holocaust embarrassed the Vatican and caused an international uproar was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days.
The Interior Ministry said it had ordered the bishop, Richard Williamson, out of Argentina because he had failed to declare his true job as director of a seminary on immigration forms and because his comments on the Holocaust "profoundly insult Argentine society, the Jewish community and all of humanity by denying a historic truth."
Williamson's views created an uproar last month when Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication and that of three other bishops consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as part of a process meant to heal a rift with ultraconservatives.
The controversy led the Vatican to demand that Williamson recant before he could be admitted as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. It also prompted the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Lefebvre, to dismiss Williamson as director of the La Reja seminary in Argentina and to distance itself from his views. The Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had no comment on the Argentine action.
But world Jewish leaders on Friday praised the decision to order the expulsion, with one group calling on other governments to follow Argentina's lead and crack down on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in their countries. "The government of Argentina has advanced the cause of truth and has struck a blow against hate," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said "This decision is commendable, even more so because the government of Argentina makes it crystal clear that Holocaust deniers are not welcome in the country."
Although Williamson has been in Argentina since 2003, the government's secretary for religious affairs, Guillermo Oliveri, said immigration officials realized he had made an undeclared change of jobs only when the controversy made the news. But Oliveri made clear that the Holocaust uproar played a key part. "I absolutely agree with the expulsion of a man residing in our country following his statements," he said.
Argentina's Jewish community, estimated at more than 200,000, is the largest in Latin America and was besieged by attacks in the 1990s, when a bomb flattened the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29, and an explosives-packed van later exploded outside the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association building, killing 85.
It was not clear when or where Williamson would go. A person who answered the phone at the Society of St. Pius X said Williamson was still in the country, then hung up.
In an interview broadcast Jan. 21, Williamson told Swedish state TV that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust and that only 200,000 to 300,000 were killed, not 6 million.
Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, where Williamson made the remarks last year that were later broadcast on Swedish television. State prosecutors in the German city of Regensburg are investigating him for incitement.
Williamson also questioned the Holocaust while serving as rector of the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minnesota, from 1988 to 2003.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Williamson declared in a 1989 speech that "Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism."
