Pope condemns Holocaust denial. In his first meeting with Jewish leaders since his controversial readmission of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Pope Benedict XVI condemned the “denial or minimization” of the Holocaust as “intolerable and altogether unacceptable.” The long-scheduled Vatican meeting took place more than three weeks after Benedict lifted the 1988 excommunications of four bishops of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, in an effort to reconcile with the schismatic group. Jewish organizations were outraged after one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, recently told Swedish television that no more than 300,000 Jews “perished in Nazi concentration camps … not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber.”
Ministry sues for access to inmates. The Oklahoma Department of Correc-tions’ refusal to allow a Christian ministry access to send Bibles and other religious materials to inmates has sparked a federal lawsuit. Wingspread Christian Ministries, headquartered in Prairie Grove, Ark., and operated by Illinois-based Evangelists for Christ Inc., filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Muskogee. Prison restrictions on prisoners’ correspondence violate the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and Oklahoma’s Religious Freedom Act, the 12-page lawsuit petition claims. According to the plaintiffs, Oklahoma prison regulations do not allow a ministry to send Bibles or other religious materials; only a publisher, bookstore or book dealer may do so. Wingspread officials said their ministry also has tried to send money orders to indigent or mentally ill prisoners during the Christmas season, only to have them returned by prison officials. The ministry said it also was informed that while individuals could write letters to inmates, ministries could not. Neville Massie, executive assistant to Oklahoma Corrections Director Justin Jones, said the department would not comment on pending litigation.
Scripture & prayer purged from prison monument. Officials at a Louisiana prison, already under fire for allegedly denying Catholic and Muslim inmates access to religious materials, have agreed to remove a biblical reference and prayer from a monument outside the prison gates. Cathy Fontenot, a spokeswoman at the maximum-security State Penitentiary at Angola, said officials submitted work orders to have what was known as the “Philippians Monument” stripped of the religious references after a complaint was lodged by the Louisiana arm of the American Civil Liberties Union. The monument featured a verse taken from Philippians 3:13 dealing with “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” The language will remain, but the verse’s citation will be removed, Fontenot said. On the opposite side of the book-like monument, there was a “Prayer of Protection,” which the ACLU complained about and is being removed. That side of the monument will be filled with artwork or a more secular inspirational message, Fontenot explained. The ACLU recently filed suit against Angola officials after two inmates—one Catholic, one Muslim—said they were denied access to worship services and religious materials.