Angela Merkel takes on inept Pope Benedict

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has taken the unprecedented step of openly criticising Pope Benedict XVI over his decision to welcome the Holocaust-denying British Bishop, Richard Williamson, back to the Roman Catholic church.

While claiming she was reluctant to be drawn into the Vatican's affairs, she said on Tuesday that it "was different when it comes to matters of principle, and I believe it is a matter of principle when... the impression is created that denying the Holocaust could be permissible".

As reported here, his Holiness made his decision to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson, a member of the breakaway Catholic traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X, despite the bishop having claimed in a recent TV interview that no Jews died in the gas chambers during World War Two. The Pope’s decision has brought widespread condemnation from Jewish groups as well as from leading Catholics. Some have gone so far as to call for Benedict to stand down.

While Merkel did not go this far, she demanded that the Pope make it "absolutely clear" that there could be no Holocaust denial and that there "must be positive dealings with the Jews". She then turned her attention to the Pope's inept handling of the whole affair: "In my view, these issues have not yet been satisfactorily clarified."

This has not pleased the 81-year-old Pope, who, to compound the matter, has the misfortune of once being a member of the Hitler Youth. Speaking through his spokesman, Federico Lombardi, he rejected Merkel's criticisms, saying that his position on the Holocaust and Holocaust denial "could not be any clearer".

Merkel's intervention appears to mark a turning point in the German people's attitude to Pope Benedict. His appointment in 2005 was a source of pride and jubilation in the country, but this week's front cover of Der Spiegel magazine carries a photograph of him with the headline: ‘A German Pope disgraces the Catholic Church’. The accompanying article quotes Hans Kung, a well-known Catholic theologian, as saying: "Benedict XVI is so cut off from the real world that he has no idea how disastrously his actions are received".

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