BishopAccountability.org
	Controversial Priest to Give up Promotion By Associated Press, carried on Ohio.com February 15, 2009 http://www.ohio.com/news/world/39642252.html VIENNA: A priest who created a controversy by suggesting that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina because of the city's sins said today he will ask the pope to rescind his promotion. Pope Benedict XVI's recent appointment of the conservative Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, to auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria's third-largest city, sparked an outcry among Catholics who warned that it could prompt people to leave the church. Wagner, among other things, also had characterized Harry Potter novels as ''Satanism.'' ''Regarding the fierce criticism, I am in prayer and, after consulting the diocesan bishop, I have decided to ask the Holy Father in Rome to take back my promotion as auxiliary bishop,'' Wagner said. Wagner's promotion was one of two recent controversial decisions by the Vatican. In an interview with Swedish state TV broadcast Jan. 21, British Bishop Richard Williamson said only about 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust, none of them gassed. The Vatican said Benedict did not know about Williamson's views when he agreed a short time later to lift his excommunication. Williamson and other bishops had been consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent. The Holy See said that removing the excommunication did not mean the Vatican shared Williamson's views. Williamson has apologized for causing distress to the pope, but has not recanted. He said he would correct himself if he is satisfied by the evidence, but insisted in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that examining it ''will take time.''
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.