Bishop Williamson/SSPX bursts back into flame

"The Vatican was warned about the Holocaust-denying views of SSPX Bishop Richard Willamson before it lifted his excommunication," wrote Damian Thompson today. And the world is going to hear all about it. Wednesday night Sveriges Television AB will broadcast “an attack on the Holy Father" which covers what the Vatican knew about Williamson prior to the move toward rapprochement with Society of St. Pius X.

According to Carlos Antonio Palad, the promotion for the almost inevitably explosive program says:

Last winter the Catholic Church was shaken by the interview made by Uppdrag granskning with Bishop Richard Williamson. The Pope and the cardinals in charge assured the world that they had not known about the interview, but this is not true.
Swedish Bishop Arborelius: "From our side we passed the information on. That is so to say the usual way of doing it, the local church passes important news about the Church on to the papal representation.”
What did the Vatican know about the Holocaust-denying bishop?

None of this is going to leave the until recently somewhat reassured international Jewish community or not altogether mollified U.S. Bishops awash with good cheer. Nor will it smooth launch of the first round of discussions between the representatives of the Holy See and SSPX.

Exercising his gift for wry understatement, Thompson writes:

Anyway, now that Rorate Caeli has drawn attention to the documentary, you can rest assured that the Pope’s enemies and critics will get to work again. I’ll be interested to see what The Times [of London] makes of it. One request: this time, could the Vatican press office get its act together?

Answer [not from the Vatican]: Probably not.