Priests' Comments on Jews, Muslims Embarrass Pope

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Outbursts about Jews and Muslims by Italian leaders of an ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholic group show the challenge facing Pope Benedict as he tries to bring them back into the Church.

Benedict attempted Wednesday to defuse an international furor over his decision to lift the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops including Richard Williamson, who denies the full extent of the Holocaust and believes there were no gas chambers.

The Pope expressed his "full and unquestionable solidarity" with Jews and warned of the dangers of Holocaust denial.

But the next day a priest who is a regional leader of the same ultra-traditionalist group as Williamson, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), made headlines by telling a local newspaper "gas chambers existed at least for disinfecting" inmates but he wasn't sure if they were used to kill them.

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The same day that Abrahamowicz made his comments about the gas chambers, Father Pierpaolo Petrucci, head of the SSPX branch in Rimini, said members of group were still "shocked" by the fact that the pope prayed with an Imam in Turkey when he visited Istanbul's Blue Mosque in 2006.

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Also Thursday, a second member of the Society of St. Pius X echoed Williamson's comments in an interview with an Italian newspaper.

"I know gas chambers existed at least to disinfect. I can't say if anybody was killed in them or not," Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz told La Tribuna di Treviso, a newspaper in northern Italy.


He referred to Jews as "the people of God who then became the God-killing people."


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