Excommunicated Bishop Williamson dies at 84

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Excommunicated traditionalist Bishop Richard N. Williamson died Jan. 29 in a hospital in Margate, England, at the age of 84 after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

The bishop's death was announced by the Priestly Society of St. Pius X, which had expelled the bishop in 2012 after he strongly, publicly and repeatedly criticized the society's leadership for engaging in talks aimed at restoring full communion with the Vatican.

Bishop Williamson had incurred excommunication in 1988 when he and three other traditionalist bishops were ordained against the orders of St. John Paul II by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X.

Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications in 2009 as a first step toward beginning formal talks aimed at reconciliation with the group. However, there was widespread outrage that Pope Benedict was reaching out to Bishop Williamson, who had denied the gassing of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

The Vatican said the pope had been unaware at the time of the bishop's radical views on the Holocaust, and Pope Benedict wrote a letter to the world's Catholic bishops apologizing for not having researched Bishop Williamson before lifting the excommunication.

The Vatican told Bishop Williamson that he would not be welcomed into full communion in the church unless he disavowed his remarks about the Holocaust and publicly apologized. He never did.

Bishop Williamson incurred automatic excommunication again in 2015 when he ordained Father Jean-Michel Faure, 73, a bishop without papal approval during a ceremony in Nova Friburgo, Brazil. He is reported to have ordained at least three other bishops since then.

Born in London March 8, 1940, he was raised an Anglican but joined the Catholic Church shortly before entering the Society of St. Pius X's seminary in Econe, Switzerland. He was in the first group of priests illictly ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in Econe on June 29, 1976. The Econe seminary had lost its canonical approval in 1975, and Archbishop Lefebvre was ordered by St. Paul VI to cease ordaining priests.

He had served for 20 years as rector of the society's seminary in the United States; it was first located in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and then moved to Winona, Minnesota. The seminary is now in Dillwyn, Virginia.