"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Excommunicated Bishop Richard Willamson, a Holocaust-denying disciple of renegade Catholic reactionary cleric Marcel Lefebvre, has died aged 84.
A long-time member of the breakaway French Archbishop Lefebvre’s secretive and schismatic Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), Catholic convert Williamson was ordained bishop in 1988. Swiftly excommunicated for defying the authority of the Pope along with his idol Lefebvre and three other bishops, Williamson was a veteran thorn in the Vatican’s side. He was also a conspiracy theorist hater of Jews, who remained unrepentant until his death. In 2009 he sparked a diplomatic scandal and panic in Rome when he shamed Pope Benedict XVI in his attempts to insist the Catholic church was no longer tolerant of antisemitism. At the moment the Pope began reconciliation with the SSPX and reinstatement of the excommunicated bishops including Williamson, he repeated his Holocaust denial claims.
Despite a conviction in Germany for saying there were no gas chambers, and multiple excommunications, Williamson spread hateful narratives about Jewish plots to dominate and destroy the Christian world throughout his life. If anything, the condemnations and official expulsion procedures emboldened him. In a 2023 interview on Iranian television, he made violently antisemitic remarks, declaring that "the Jews are given power by the devil," that the Holocaust is a "myth," and that Jews were behind both the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the war in Ukraine, stating, "Because the Jews control the American government from inside."
On Friday, January 24, 2024, his assistant priest announced on the Facebook group and Telegram channel Truth Unchained that Williamson, had suffered a brain hemorrhage. On January 30, the SSPX officially confirmed his death. Despite multiple expulsions from the secretive schismatic Catholic Society, Williamson had remained a charismatic figure lauded within the fraternity. He also gained worldwide notoriety for his antisemitic and conspiracy-laden statements.
Richard Nelson Williamson was born on March 8, 1940, into an Anglican family in Buckinghamshire to an English father and a wealthy American mother. He studied at Winchester College before pursuing a degree in English literature at Clare College, Cambridge. After graduating, he became a teacher.
In 1971, he converted to Catholicism and entered the Brompton Oratory as a postulant. However, he quickly left the institution to join the Society of Saint Pius X, the extremist Catholic movement founded in 1969 by French Archbishop Lefebvre in opposition to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), including the introduction of vernacular languages into the Latin language Mass. Vatican II’s moves to change Catholicism’s relationship with Judaism and Jews, after millennia of Christian antisemitism also roiled the breakaway ultra-orthodox Lefebvrists, who continued to say mass in the pre-Council manner with the priest facing away from the congregation. Williamson enrolled at the International Saint Pius X Seminary in Écône, Switzerland, and in 1976, he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Lefebvre.
Williamson later moved to the United States, where he became rector of Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary, first in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and later in Winona, Minnesota. He remained in this position even after his highly controversial "consecration" as a bishop in 1988. That year, Marcel Lefebvre unilaterally consecrated Williamson and three other SSPX priests as bishops, directly defying the orders of Pope John Paul II. This act of disobedience led to the automatic excommunication of all four bishops, along with Lefebvre himself.
Following his excommunications, Williamson began delivering speeches and publishing letters outlining his increasingly extreme views, particularly of an anti-Jewish nature.
In a 1989 speech at Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in Sherbrooke, Canada he claimed that :
"There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies. The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel.... Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism."
Alongside his conspiracy theories, he also voiced reactionary opinions on gender roles, asserting that women should not attend university and claiming that "women wearing trousers is an attack on their femininity."
A few weeks after the September 11 attacks on America in 2001, Williamson justified the terrorist assaults which he said had been provoked by the United States, Israel and the Jews and were part of long-standing anti-Arab policy. Williamson outlined his views in a letter titled World Trade Center – The Scourge of Sin (Winona, October 1, 2001).
"Unquestionably one main grievance of Arabs against the United States, provoking their terrorists to lash out as we have seen, is the United States' one-sided favoring of Israel over the Arabs for the last forty years, » Williamson wrote. « But each time the United States attempts to act even-handedly towards the Arabs, Jewish power inside the United States - e.g. virtual control of finance and the media - blocks the attempt, and the United States returns to oppressing the Arabs."
In full-blown conspiracy mode, Williamson declared that a long series of historical events were not as they seemed.
"On the political level, we can be virtually certain that the vile media will not tell us the full story. There is serious reason to believe--that in 1898, it was not the Spaniards who sank the "USS Maine"; that in 1917, it was not the Germans who set up the "Lusitania" as a target; that in 1941 it was not the Japanese who set up Pearl Harbor for attack; that in 1963 it was not Lee Harvey Oswald who killed President Kennedy. In 1990 it was certainly not Saddam Hussein who promised not to react if he invaded Kuwait. In 1994 it was certainly not Timothy McVeigh's van exploding outside the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City which brought the front of the building down. In 2001...? Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, now Osama bin Laden, from CIA-assets to personal enemies of the American people --how many more times will the trick work? »
According to Williamson, a global elite—a New World Order, often associated with Jews—of orchestrating wars and political crises. He advanced a conspiratorial narrative, claiming that Jewish influence had been steadily increasing as Catholic faith weakened, particularly since Vatican II. Framing these events within a providentialist interpretation of history, he portrayed Islamic terrorism and demographic decline as divine punishments for a Christendom corrupted by materialism and hedonism. Opposing the modern world to an idealized medieval Christian world, he warned of an imminent apocalyptic reckoning should humanity fail to repent, citing Marian apparitions to support his claims.
In 2003, Williamson was appointed rector of the Society of Saint Pius X Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Seminary in La Reja, Argentina. During the following years, he gained attention for his ultra-conservative views and for promoting conspiracy theories.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI eased restrictions on the Tridentine Rite, a move seen as an attempt to reconcile with the Lefebvrists. On January 21, 2009, he lifted the 1988 excommunications, hoping to encourage a more constructive dialogue on doctrinal differences, though SSPX bishops remained unauthorized to serve within the Catholic Church.
However, it was soon revealed that in November 2008, Williamson had given an interview to Swedish television, recorded in Germany and broadcast on the very day of the excommunication lifting. In the interview, he openly denied the Holocaust, stating, “I believe there were no gas chambers.” He further claimed that the number of Jewish victims did not exceed 300,000 and endorsed the Leuchter Report, a pseudo-scientific Holocaust denial document that has been thoroughly debunked by experts and scientific research.
The revelation sparked an international scandal. The Vatican claimed it was unaware of Williamson’s extreme antisemitic views, despite their easy accessibility online. Jewish organizations, Catholic leaders, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly condemned the Vatican’s handling of the affair. In response, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel suspended relations with the Vatican. The interview, widely circulated on YouTube and other platforms, amassed millions of views—fueling Holocaust denial narratives but also shedding light on their intrinsic connection to antisemitism.
Amid growing controversy, the SSPX took partial disciplinary action against Williamson in February 2009, removing him from his position as director of the La Reja seminary. Argentina, home to one of the largest Jewish communities outside Israel, ordered him to leave the country within ten days.
Upon his return to the UK, he was warmly welcomed by British Holocaust deniers, particularly Michele Renouf, a former model known for her antisemitic views and for organizing international Holocaust denial events. Williamson had been introduced to her through Holocaust denier David Irving.
The Williamson affair unsettled members of the SSPX, under pressure to accept Pope Benedict XVI’s statement on February 12, 2009, affirming that the Catholic Church is “profoundly and irrevocably committed to rejecting all antisemitism.” Williamson defender Father Arnaud Sélégny, secretary general of the SSPX international headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland, stated that Williamson would remain part of any potential reconciliation with the Vatican, arguing that “everyone is free to have their own opinion within the Society.”
In 2010, Williamson was tried in Germany for publicly denying the Holocaust. He was found guilty and fined €12,000. While he never denied making the statements, he claimed he had believed the interview would only be broadcast in Sweden, where Holocaust denial is not illegal. He later appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which rejected his case ten years later.
In an attempt to contain the fallout, the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, responsible for reconciliation with the SSPX, issued a statement in which Williamson offered a vague apology without retracting his Holocaust denial. The Vatican rejected his apology, stating that it failed to meet the necessary conditions for reintegration into the Church. In October 2012, he was ultimately expelled from the SSPX—not for his antisemitic remarks, but for "refusing to show the respect and obedience due to his legitimate superiors."
He then founded in 2014 the Priestly Union of Marcel Lefebvre, also known as SSPX Resistance, a movement he portrayed as a gathering of traditionalist Catholics seeking to practice their faith without compromise with "liberalism or modernism." He went on to ordain several bishops, leading to his second excommunication from the Catholic Church in 2015.
Although he was expelled from the SSPX in 2012, the announcement of his death did not go unnoticed by his former fraternity. Reading the SSPX’s official statement, it is evident that the rejection of antisemitism remains ambiguous within the organization. Tributes quickly appeared on social media, particularly from far right and traditionalist Catholic accounts, reflecting his enduring influence legacy in these circles. Among those paying homage was Alexander Dugin, the extreme right Russian ideologue, who publicly praised Williamson following his death on his Facebook account.
For sixteen years, Conspiracy Watch has been diligently spreading awareness about the perils of conspiracy theories through real-time monitoring and insightful analyses. To keep our mission alive, we rely on the critical support of our readers.
