Richard Williamson | |
|---|---|
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 29 June 1976[1] by Marcel Lefebvre |
| Consecration | 30 June 1988[1] by Marcel Lefebvre |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Richard Nelson Williamson 8 March 1940[1] |
| Denomination | Traditionalist Catholic, Catholic |
| Alma mater | Winchester College,[2] University of Cambridge,[2] International Seminary of Saint Pius X |
| Motto | Fidelis inveniatur[3] |
Ordination history of Richard Williamson | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Richard Nelson Williamson (born 8 March 1940) is an English traditionalist Catholic bishop who opposes the changes in the church brought about by the Second Vatican Council.
In 1988, Williamson was one of four Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) priests illicitly consecrated as bishops by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, for which Pope John Paul II declared he had incurred ipso facto automatic excommunication.[6] The validity of the excommunication has always been denied by the SSPX, who, citing canon law, argue that the consecrations were permissible due to a crisis in the Catholic Church. The excommunications, including that of Williamson, were lifted on 21 January 2009 but the suspension of the bishops from ministry within the Catholic Church remained in force.[7]
Immediately afterward, Swedish television broadcast an interview recorded earlier at the SSPX's seminary in Zaitzkofen, Bavaria. During the interview, Williamson expressed his belief that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust and that Nazi Germany did not use gas chambers. Based upon these statements, he was charged with and convicted of Holocaust denial by the district court of Regensburg, Germany.[8] The Holy See declared that Pope Benedict had been unaware of Williamson's views when he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops.[9] He said that Williamson would remain suspended from his episcopal functions until he unequivocally and publicly distanced himself from that stated position on the Holocaust.[10][2] In 2010, Williamson was convicted of incitement in a German court in relation to those views; the conviction was later vacated on appeal.[11] He was convicted again on this charge in a retrial in early 2013.[12] Williamson appealed again, but his appeal was rejected.
After a number of incidents, including calling for the resignation of Bernard Fellay as the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, refusal to stop publishing his weekly email and an unauthorised visitation to Brazil, Williamson was expelled from the Society in 2012. After leaving the Society, Williamson consecrated Jean-Michel Faure, Tomás de Aquino Ferreira da Costa, and Gerardo Zendejas as bishops in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Because of these consecrations, he was excommunicated latae sententiae from the Catholic Church again in 2015.[13]
Williamson is fluent in English, French, German and Spanish.[14]
I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility.