Media Twist: The Williamson Interview Was Not Released Until the Lifting of the Excommunications

A conspiracy against the Pope behind the negationist bishop
By Andrea Tornielli (Il Giornale)

It is an unofficial dossier, of only a few pages, dedicated to the origins of the Williamson case, much read in the sacred palaces [that is, the buildings of the Vatican where the offices of the Curia are, especially the Apostolic Palace] these days. It is a dossier that reached the desks that count in on the Vatican side of the Tiber and that puts together dates and circumstances, suggesting that what happened in these latest days could be more than a series of coincidences. According to the dossier, the filming and airing of the interview with the prelate denying gas chambers and the reality of the millions of Jews dead during the Shoah, in the eve of the remission of the excommunication of the Lefebvrist bishops was somehow orchestrated by circles seeking to put Benedict XVI in trouble. Circles that might have been helped by some opposition from within, someone contrary to the reconciliation with the Fraternity St. Pius X.The dossier minimizes neither the absurd words pronounced by Williamson, nor the gravity of their coincidence with the Day of Memory, which especially hurt the sensibility of the Jewish world, but it hints to the possibility of interventions aimed at creating the case. Williamson – says the dossier – was interviewed on November 1st 2008 “at the Bavarian seminary of the Fraternity St. Pius X”. The bishop was in Regensburg where he came to ordain to priesthood a Swedish former Protestant pastor. The bishop is reached by the journalist Ali Fegan, of the TV show “Uppgrad Gransking” (“Mission Research”). They talk for one hour. At some point, Fegan reminds Williamson certain negationist statements on gas chambers he had released many years earlier in Canada. The bishops answers by saying the well-known enormities, knowing that his words, in Germany, constitute a criminal offence: “for the things I am saying you could take me to jail since we are in Germany…”The interview was aired on January 21st, the very day of the signing of the decree of remission of the excommunication.


The authors of the show guarantee that it was a coincidence, while the “Dossier Williamson” does not rule out the possibility that the info about the remission of the excommunication was somehow leaked to the Swedish network. During the same show there was also an interview with the French journalist Fiammetta Venner, a well-known militant of the homosexual movement and active in pro-choice campaigns. On the eve of last september’s journey of Benedict XVI to Paris and Lourdes, together with her lover Caroline Fourest – with whom she shares many anti-religious battles and ties to the Grand Orient of France – she authored a book titled “The New Papal Army. Legion of Christ, Opus Dei, Traditionalists”, very harsh against the Pope and against the Lefebvrists, accused of connections with the circles of the French far-right. The dossier insists on the French origin of the case and on the role played by Venner and Fourest in this story. On January 20, on the eve of the airing of the show, the German weekly Der Spiegel revealed in advance the contents of the interview and will go as far as to write that “the Central Council of Jews in Germany “ had been “already informed” of the negationist statements of the bishop.But the decree had been already penned and personally delivered into Fellay’s hands by Card. Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Fraternity St. Pius X, called to Rome for the occasion. Therefore, when the news of the Williamson interview begun to spread around, it was already to late to do anything. On January 20th, the Diocese of Stockholm and the head of the German Lefebvrists release two distinct communiqués to deplore all forms of anti-Semitism. The news was already in the open, but its scope and its consequences are not perceived in the sacred palaces.A complicated mystery, then, or a series of coincidences? The dossier circulated does not contain evidence. It limits itself to compare hypothesis and data. One thing is sure: not many, in the Vatican, believe that the Williamson case was just a coincidence.
Paolo Rodari also has an interesting story.
(wdtprs.com, 3 February post)