"World Day for Consecrated Life" celebrated this year on the 8th is intended "to help the entire church to esteem ever more greatly" those in religious life, Pope John Paul II said at its inception in 1997. This week, however, controversy surrounding the reinstatement of an excommunicated religious leader may overshadow the celebration.

Jewish groups from around the world and Catholics from a number of quarters said they were shocked by Pope Benedict XVI's decision to overturn the excommunication of British-born Richard Williamson, one of four traditionalist Catholic bishops whose excommunications were lifted last Saturday. Williamson has made statements denying the full extent of the Holocaust of European Jews.

The move is a "serious blow for Jewish-Vatican relations and a slap in the face of the late Pope John Paul II who made such remarkable efforts to eradicate and combat anti-Semitism," said Rabbi David Rosen, the international director of interreligious affairs for the New York-based American Jewish Committee.

Williamson told Swedish television in an interview broadcast a week ago: "I believe there were no gas chambers" and that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than 6 million.

In attempting to heal the rift, Benedict expressed his "full and unquestionable solidarity" with Jews during his weekly audience on Wednesday. The German-born pope said the attempt to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust should remain a warning to all humanity. Recalling his visit to the Auschwitz death camp in 2006, Benedict condemned the "pitiless killing of millions of Jews, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred."

Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, said: "Clearly the damage remains. As welcome as the pope's remarks are they contain a glaring omission, the demand by the Vatican that Williamson renounce his heinous views."

Elie Wiesel, the death camp survivor, author, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said Benedict had given credence to "the most vulgar aspect of anti-Semitism" by rehabilitating Williamson.

On Wednesday Israel's chief rabbinate severed ties with the Vatican in protest of the pope's reinstatement of Williamson. The Jewish state's highest religious authority sent a letter to the Holy See expressing "sorrow and pain" at the papal decision. "It will be very difficult for the chief rabbinate of Israel to continue its dialogue with the Vatican as before," the letter said. Chief rabbis of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews were parties to the letter.

Source: Articles by Philip Pullella for Reuters, Ian Deitch for the Associated Press, and Ecumenical News International