Richard Williamson (bishop)

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.

Williamson was born in 1940 in Buckinghamshire, England, the middle son of a Marks & Spencer buyer and his wealthy American wife.

Williamson attended Winchester College before going on to study at Clare College, Cambridge, where he received a degree in English literature.

Upon graduating, he taught at a college in Ghana for a brief period.

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.

Williamson, originally an Anglican, was received into the Catholic Church in 1971.

After a few months as a postulant at the Brompton Oratory, he left.

Williamson entered the International Seminary of Saint Pius X at Écône, Switzerland, and in 1976 he was ordained a priest by Lefebvre.

Williamson subsequently moved to the United States, where he served as the rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Ridgefield, Connecticut from 1983, and continued in the position when the seminary moved to Winona, Minnesota in 1988.

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.

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 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.

Lefebvre did not have a pontifical mandate for these consecrations (i.e. permission from the pope), normally required by canon 1382 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

On 17 June 1988 Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops sent the four priests a formal canonical warning that they would automatically incur the penalty of excommunication if they were to be consecrated by Lefebvre without papal permission.

On 30 June 1988 Williamson and the three other priests were consecrated bishop by Archbishop Lefebvre and Antônio de Castro Mayer.

On 1 July 1988 Cardinal Bernardin Gantin issued a declaration stating that Lefebvre, de Castro Mayer, Williamson, and the three other newly ordained bishops "have incurred ipso facto the excommunication latae sententiae reserved to the Apostolic See".

On 2 July 1988, Pope John Paul II issued the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, in which he reaffirmed the excommunication, and described the consecration as an act of "disobedience to the Roman pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the Church", and that "such disobedience – which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy — constitutes a schismatic act".

Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, head of the commission responsible for implementing Ecclesia Dei, has said this resulted in a "situation of separation, even if it was not a formal schism."

The SSPX denied the validity of the excommunications, saying that the consecrations were necessary due to a moral and theological crisis in the Catholic Church, making them permissible under canon law.

In 1991, he assisted in the consecration of Licínio Rangel as bishop for the Priestly Society of St. John Mary Vianney after the death of its founder, Antônio de Castro Mayer.

In 2003 Williamson was appointed rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina.

In common with other traditionalists, Williamson opposes the changes in the Catholic Church brought about by the Second Vatican Council.

In 2006, he ordained two priests and seven deacons in Warsaw, Poland for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Priestly Society of Saint Josaphat (SSJK).

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.

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.

Immediately afterward, Swedish television broadcast an interview recorded earlier at the SSPX's seminary in Zaitzkofen, Bavaria.

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.

Based upon these statements, he was charged with and convicted of Holocaust denial by the district court of Regensburg, Germany.

The Holy See declared that Pope Benedict had been unaware of Williamson's views when he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops.

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.

His excommunication, along with that of Archbishop Lefebvre and the other bishops consecrated the Écône consecrations were lifted in 2009 by Benedict XVI.

After his episcopal consecration Williamson remained rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minnesota.

He performed various episcopal functions, including confirmations and ordinations.

In 2010, Williamson was convicted of incitement in a German court in relation to those views; the conviction was later vacated on appeal.

After a number of incidents, including calling for the resignation of Bernard Fellay as the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, refusal to stop publishing his weekly email and an unauthorised visitation to Brazil, Williamson was expelled from the Society in 2012.

He was convicted again on this charge in a retrial in early 2013.

Williamson appealed again, but his appeal was rejected.

After leaving the Society, Williamson consecrated Jean-Michel Faure, Tomás de Aquino Ferreira da Costa, and as bishops in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Because of these consecrations, he was excommunicated latae sententiae from the Catholic Church again in 2015.

Williamson is fluent in English, French, German and Spanish.