{"id":2129,"date":"2010-04-16T17:58:58","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T17:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h.php"},"modified":"2010-04-16T17:58:58","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T17:58:58","slug":"bishop-convicted-for-denying-h","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h","title":{"rendered":"Bishop Convicted for Denying Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BERLIN &#8211; A German court convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday for denying the Holocaust in a television interview.<br \/>\nA court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II.<br \/>\nThe court ordered Williamson to pay a fine of (EURO)10,000 ($13,544).<br \/>\nThe Roman Catholic bishop was barred by his order from attending Friday&#8217;s proceedings or making statements to the media.<br \/>\nHis lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, told The Associated Press after the court ruling that Williamson has yet to decide if would appeal it.<br \/>\nDenying the Holocaust is a criminal offense in Germany.<br \/>\nThe court last year ordered a fine of (EURO)12,000 for Williamson, without a trial. But the Bishop appealed that ruling, forcing his case to be tried publicly.<br \/>\nLossmann said that Williamson had explicitly asked the Swedish television crew conducting the interview not to broadcast it in Germany.<br \/>\nIn issuing her ruling, Judge Karin Frahm said the bishop could not have expected that the clip would show up on YouTube and be seen directly in Germany, which led her to reduce the fine, court spokesman Bernhard Schneider told the AP.<br \/>\nThe journalists who conducted the interview also ignored a court order to attend the trial, Lossmann said, leaving the judge to rely on written statements as testimony.<br \/>\n&#8220;That does not do a case like this justice,&#8221; Lossmann said.<br \/>\nThe interview was conducted near Regensburg and was granted shortly before Williamson&#8217;s excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI, along with that of three other bishops from the anti-modernization movement of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.<br \/>\nThe lifting of Williamson&#8217;s excommunication sparked outrage among Jewish groups and in Israel. The Vatican&#8217;s handling of the affair prompted criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.<br \/>\nThe bishop had been forbidden by his order to attend the proceedings in Regensburg. The ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X has also forbidden him to make statements to the media.<br \/>\nWilliamson lives in Great Britain, Lossmann said.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BERLIN &#8211; A German court convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday for denying the Holocaust in a television interview. A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bishop Convicted for Denying Holocaust<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bishop Convicted for Denying Holocaust\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BERLIN &#8211; A German court convicted ultraconservative British Bishop Richard Williamson on Friday for denying the Holocaust in a television interview. 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A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish television that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-04-16T17:58:58+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h","name":"Bishop Convicted for Denying Holocaust","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-16T17:58:58+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-16T17:58:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/bishop-convicted-for-denying-h#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bishop Convicted for Denying Holocaust"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}