permission from the pope), normally required by canon 1382 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Lefebvre did not have a pontifical mandate for these consecrations (i.e. In June 1988 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre announced his intention to consecrate Williamson and three other priests ( Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, and Alfonso de Galarreta) as bishops. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Ridgefield, Connecticut from 1983, and continued in the position when the seminary moved to Winona, Minnesota in 1988. Williamson subsequently moved to the United States, where he served as the rector of St. Williamson entered the International Seminary of Saint Pius X at Écône, Switzerland, and in 1976 he was ordained a priest by Lefebvre. He became a member of the Society of Saint Pius X, a traditionalist Catholic faction founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in protest against what Lefebvre saw as the liberalism of the Second Vatican Council. After a few months as a postulant at the Brompton Oratory, he left. Williamson, originally an Anglican, was received into the Catholic Church in 1971. Upon graduating, he taught at a college in Ghana for a brief period. Williamson attended Winchester College before going on to study at Clare College, Cambridge, where he received a degree in English literature. Williamson was born in 1940 in Buckinghamshire, England, the middle son of a Marks & Spencer buyer and his wealthy American wife. Williamson is fluent in English, French, German and Spanish. Because of these consecrations, he was excommunicated latae sententiae from the Catholic Church again in 2015. 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. Pius X, refusal to stop publishing his weekly email and an unauthorised visitation to Brazil, Williamson was expelled from the Society in 2012. Williamson appealed again, but his appeal was rejected.Īfter a number of incidents, including calling for the resignation of Bernard Fellay as the Superior General of the Society of St. He was convicted again on this charge in a retrial in early 2013. In 2010, Williamson was convicted of incitement in a German court in relation to those views the conviction was later vacated on appeal. 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. The Holy See declared that Pope Benedict had been unaware of Williamson's views when he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops. Based upon these statements, he was charged with and convicted of Holocaust denial by a German court. 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. Immediately afterward, Swedish television broadcast an interview recorded earlier at the SSPX's seminary in Zaitzkofen, Bavaria. Certain exceptions were granted by Popes Benedict XVI and Francis as a way to foster dialogue and goodwill and to allow the priests to exercise limited ministry despite their canonically irregular situation. 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. 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. 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. Richard Nelson Williamson (born 8 March 1940) is a British independent Traditionalist Catholic bishop who opposes the changes in the church brought about by the Second Vatican Council. Bishops consecrated by Richard Williamson as principal consecrator
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