W: was born an Anglican, the son of a vicar, in 1940. He went to Winchester College and read literature at Cambridge University, before teaching in Africa and converting to Catholicism in 1971. He became a member of the Society of St Pius X, which had been founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1970 to counter the reforms in the Church made by the Second Vatican Council during the previous decade. W. was a novice at the London Oratory, studied at Lefebvre's seminary, and was ordained a priest in 1976. Archbishop Lefebvre announced in 1988 that he intended to ordain Williamson, and three other priests, as bishops, and did so despite warnings that he would be excommunicated. In 1988, the Holy See declared that Williamson had incurred automatic excommunication latae sententiae, i.e. as a direct and immediate consequence of his unauthorized consecration as a bishop by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication in January 2009.

W. described as authentic the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' which purports to reveal Jewish plots to achieve world domination. W. has claimed that the United States planned the attacks of 9/11, and has accused Freemasons of conspiring against the Church. In November 2008, W. gave an interview to a Swedish television programme in which he disputed that six million Jews had died at the hands of the Nazis, and claimed that none had died in gas chambers. He said: "I believe there were no gas chambers," and insisted that up to "300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers". In 2009, W. was convicted of incitement by a German court and fined €10,000.

Werke von / Works of W.: Dinoscopus

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 08.03.2012 

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