02-06-2009, 03:21 AM
Merkel praises Vatican's Holocaust stance
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Feb 5, 6:11 PM (ET)
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's leader praised the Vatican on Thursday for its "unequivocal" demand that a British bishop recant his denial of the Holocaust before he can be rehabilitated. She said the move was "important and good."
France's president, meanwhile, said British Bishop Richard Williamson's views were "shocking."
"It is incredible, shocking and inadmissible to be able to find in the 21st century somebody who dares question the gas chambers, the Holocaust, the martyrdom of Jews. It is inadmissible," President Nicolas Sarkozy said on French television Thursday night.
Earlier, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Vatican's decision to insist that Williamson distance himself from his remarks was an important step in maintaining relations between Christians and Jews.
She had publicly demanded earlier in the week that Pope Benedict XVI clarify the Vatican's stance on the Holocaust after it ruled that the ultraconservative Williamson's excommunication should be lifted.
Merkel said the Vatican's latest statement "makes clear that Holocaust denial will never be allowed to stand without consequences."
Sarkozy did not comment on the pope's decision last month to lift the excommunication of Williamson and three other ultraconservative bishops. They were excommunicated in 1988 after being consecrated without papal consent by the late ultraconservative French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Williamson was shown on Swedish state television several days before the lifting of his excommunication expressing his view that no Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II.