Bishop 'sorry' for comments on Holocaust bishop says sorry

A BRITISH Catholic bishop who caused uproar by denying the scale of the Holocaust has apologised for his views after widespread condemnation.

Bishop Richard Williamson made his apology in a statement on a Catholic news agency website. He caused outrage by saying there were no gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps and that no more than 300,000 Jews died in the Holocaust, rather than the accepted figure of six million.

Zenit, a Catholic news agency, reported him saying: "I regret having made such remarks. If I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of the Third Reich, I would not have made them."

Zenit said Bishop Williamson's comments were released by the Vatican's Ecclesia Dei commission, a body established by Pope John Paul in 1988 to bring breakaway traditionalist Catholics like Williamson back into the fold.

Williamson, who belongs to a Catholic group called the Society of St Pius X, was excommunicated after he was ordained as bishop in an unauthorised ceremony 20 years ago.

Pope Benedict last month lifted the excommunication of Bishop Williamson and three other traditionalists in an effort to heal a two-decade schism within the Catholic Church.