The Pope, Benedict XVI - the former Hitler Jugend member Josef "I didn't mean to join the Nazis, honest" Ratzinger - has decided to lift the excommunication on British-born bishop, Richard Williamson, who has said there were no gas chambers and "only" 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps.
Bishop Williamson was one of four traditionalist bishops to have his excommunication lifted Saturday, just days after he was shown in a Swedish state TV interview saying that historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The four bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent - a move the Vatican said at the time was an act of schism.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Williamson's views were absolutely indefensible. But he denied that rehabilitating Williamson implied that the Vatican shared them.
"They are his personal ideas ... that we certainly don't share but they have nothing to do with the issue of the excommunication and the removal of the excommunication," Lombardi told AP Television News.
Hmmm... I wonder what Papal Knight Sir Sigmund Sternberg has ti say about this.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.