The Vatican has rejected an apology from a bishop whose denial of the Holocaust caused international uproar between Jews and Catholics, saying it did not meet its demand for a full and public recanting.
British Bishop Richard Williamson, who was ordered to leave Argentina and is now in his homeland, issued the apology in Thursday.
In the statement, he said "I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them."
Chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Bishop Williamson's statement did not seem to respect the conditions set forth by the Vatican which had ordered him to unequivocally distance himself from his positions regarding the Holocaust.
In January, Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications of Bishop Williamson and three other bishops to try to heal a 20-year-old schism that began when they were thrown out of the Church for being ordained without the permission of Pope John Paul II.
Bishop Williamson told Swedish television in an interview broadcast the same month that he believed there were no gas chambers and that no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by most historians.
Jewish groups praised the Vatican for rejecting the apology. The tough stand is likely to make it harder for the traditionalist bishop to be fully re-admitted into the Church, Vatican sources said, and lead to greater scrutiny of the society to which he belongs.
