Cardinal in Holocaust controversy replaced
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI yesterday replaced the cardinal responsible for lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop as part of the Vatican’s effort to reconcile with an ultraconservative group.
The commission that had been in charge of the effort will now be under the authority of a powerful office seen as close to the pontiff, the Vatican said. Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who had been leading the reconciliation, is stepping down after reaching the customary retirement age of 80, the Vatican said.
Hoyos had been head of the Pontifical “Ecclesia Dei’’ Commission, which was charged with healing the schism with the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X.
The effort to reconcile with the Society of St. Pius X will now be headed by Cardinal William Levada, the highest-ranking US churchman in the Vatican hierarchy. Levada heads the Vatican’s powerful orthodoxy watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict headed for decades before becoming pope in 2005.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the Pius society in 1969 in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which included outreach to Judaism and other religions.
The Vatican in 1988 excommunicated four of its bishops after they were consecrated without papal consent by Lefebvre.
Hoyos said he and other officials knew nothing about Williamson’s denial that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Benedict made a rare acknowledgment of a Vatican mistake in March.
