Updated: Catholic Bishop Says He Was Misquoted – Paper Stands by Its Quote

Talk about recipe for a scandal.

Two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Polish Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church gives an interview to a Catholic newspaper in Italy during which he allegedly accused the Jews of “expropriating” the Holocaust for their own propagandistic purposes. He goes onto condemn Israel’s security barrier and accuses Israel of treating the Palestinians like animals.

The story makes the papers (including the JTA) and in response, the Bishop in question, Tadeusz Pieronek, says he was misquoted and that the interview was published without his authorization.

Is that the end of it?

Not in a million years.

The newspaper, Pontifex Roma, responds with a truculent editorial stating that it got the story right.

At least that’s the overall message Snapshots is getting from the Google translation of the page, which indicates that the paper is quite willing to publish the full text of the interview. Yes, we know that the translation is not perfect, and for that reason we are calling on calling on an Army of Davids.

Readers of Snapshots who are fluent in Italian are invited to translate the page in the comments section below.

We’re particularly interested in a translation of “Risponde con l’arroganza del vescovo beccato in fallo.”

JAN. 27: UPDATE! WE HAVE A TRANSLATION! (COPIED AND PASTED FROM COMMENTS BELOW)

TRANSLATION, AS REQUESTED, OF THE ARTICLE IN PONTIFEX ROMA Re: BISHOP PIERONEK

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Dear Monsignor Pieronek, give the good example
Tuesday January 26, 2010 00:00

If one doesn’t have courage, he cannot just give it to himself.
This Monsignor Pieronek is nearly pitiful, Bishop and don Abbondio (a cowardly priest of a famous novel by XIX century Italian writer A. Manzoni) in the same person, caught between the anvil of his honest words and the hammer of a politically correct public opinion that probably forced him to backtrack. Prudent at home, unscrupulous outside. This time, though, Pontifex doesn’t play ball and shouts that Pieronek, those things had said them and repeated in Italian. He talks about a missing authorization to the interview. What is he talking about? An interview is either denied or accepted. That’s it. But it cannot be authorized and moreover, he didn’t even ask as it would have been normal, to have a copy beforehand of his replies. So, what does he want today? He answers with the arrogance of the bishop caught red-handed. Climbing up walls. However, what surprises is that a certain press, incline to modernism and sensitive to the fascination of the lobbies, took the bishop’s word for it (of course) and didn’t report even a line of our version which was correctly reported by the Polish press agency Kai. We challenge Monsignor Pieronek to a public debate and let it be known to him that we are ready to display the complete text of his replies: we could then read plenty of nice things, like as he claims, the offended reply given some time ago to a Le Monde journalist (his own words and not reported only for elegance), or other sharp-tongued comments of his. Monsignor Pieronek, You are a correct Bishop, our esteem remains unscathed. However, try to respect your role as a bishop with a breath of dignity, if any is still left in you and be of good example. It seems to us that in Poland a controversial but serious Bishop had dignity: Wielgus.