It is not the role of CRIF, a Jewish organisation, to comment on the lifting of the excommunication of these traditionalist bishops by Pope Benedict XVI.
However, CRIF is free to state that the Holocaust denier Mgr Williamson is a despicable liar whose sole objective is to revive the centuries-long hatred of the Jews.
CRIF also recognises that the positions of this man represent a tiny minority in the Roman Catholic Church and that it is at such difficult moments that Jewish-Catholic dialogue takes on its full significance.
(The traditionalist schism is the result of a movement inspired by French bishop Marcel Lefebvre, who died in 1991. Refusing the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, the thinking of the movement is still today very marked by the Christian anti-Judaism which prevailed in the Catholic Church at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, according to the French Catholic daily “La Croix”.)
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