In a Catholic Herald investigation published today, Bishop Richard Williamson, a senior English prelate of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), is exposed as a poisonous anti-Semite and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who believes that Jews are working on behalf of Antichrist.



Scandalously, the SSPX – a breakaway Catholic sect founded by the ultra-traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – is supporting Bishop Williamson. Moreover, a spokesman for the Society has refused to condemn The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic forgery circulated by the Nazis – and endorsed on the record by Bishop Williamson.

Here is the Herald’s report, which is based on our tape-recorded transcript of an interview with Bishop Williamson, one of four priests ordained bishop by Lefebvre in 1988 and excommunicated by John Paul II as a result.

Williamson, 67, a former Anglican educated at Winchester and Cambridge, has left his anti-Semitic rantings all over the internet. In this pastoral letter, for example, he writes: “However, until [the Jews] re-discover their true Messianic vocation, they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ’s throne in Jerusalem.”

You can see and hear Williamson in action on YouTube, in a series of films in which he claims that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions. This is a man who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. Yet, for 20 years, the Society of St Pius X has afforded him a place of honour as one of its four senior bishops.

The SSPX is currently negotiating with the Vatican about returning to full Communion with the Holy See. It should have expelled Williamson before the talks started. Now it is too late.