BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNN) — Bishop Richard Williamson, who last month denied the existence of the Holocaust in an interview with Swedish television, was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days, the Ministry of Interior said.

“The bishop has repeatedly forged the true motive for his stay in the country, having declared that he is an employee of ‘La Tradicion’ Civil Society when, in reality, his true activity was as priest and seminary director of the Society of Saint Pius X in the neighborhood of Moreno,” Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said in a written statement.

Williamson and three other bishops who belong to the Society of Saint Pius X were excommunicated in 1988. The society was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve, who rebelled against the Vatican’s modernizing reforms in the 1960s, and who consecrated the men in unsanctioned ceremonies.

“Williamson has had public notoriety following his anti-Semitic statements to Swedish media in which he questioned whether Jewish people were victims of the Holocaust,” Randazzo continued.

“For these reasons, along with the strong condemnation from the Argentine government of how statements like these harm Argentine society, the Jewish community, and all of humanity by trying to deny a historic truth, the national government has decided to demand that the Bishop leave the country or be expelled.”

In the interview with Swedish television, Williamson said, “I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against — is hugely against — 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.

“I believe there were no gas chambers,” he stated.

Williamson, who had already been removed from his seminary post in Argentina, made headlines in January when he and three other ultra-conservative bishops were welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church, more than 20 years after Pope John Paul II excommunicated them on a theological question unrelated to the Holocaust.

The rehabilitation of Williamson sparked condemnation from Israel, American Jewish leaders and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others.

The Vatican pointed to several statements by Pope Benedict XVI condemning the destruction of European Jewry. The pope said he did not know of Williamson’s views on the Holocaust when he lifted the excommunication.

The Vatican said Williamson will not be allowed to perform priestly functions until he recants his Holocaust denial.

Williamson apologized for “distress” his remarks caused the pope, but has not retracted them.

Last week, a German court refused to intervene on behalf of Williamson, who is facing prosecution for denying the Holocaust — a crime in Germany.

Yet another issue with the f….ing church… why don’t they just throw him out take the catholic (and other churches) posessions and give them to the people? Religion is bad, religion hurts, religion kills. All religions are bad, no exception. As soon as you start believing in a being above yourself that controls you, you are lost.

The Legionaries of Christ, an influential Roman Catholic religious order, have been shaken by new revelations that their founder, who died a year ago, had an affair with a woman and fathered a daughter just as he and his thriving conservative order were winning the acclaim of Pope John Paul II.

The Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado in October 2001.

Before his death, the founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had been forced to leave public ministry by Pope Benedict XVI because of accusations from more than a dozen men who said he had sexually abused them when they were students.

But most members of the Legion continued to defend Father Maciel, asserting that the accusations had not been proved. Father Maciel died in January 2008 at the age of 87, and was buried in Mexico, where he was born.

Now the order’s general director, the Rev. Álvaro Corcuera, is quietly visiting its religious communities and seminaries in the United States and informing members that their founder led a double life, current and former Legionaries said.

The order is not publicly confirming the details of the scandal.

Jim Fair, a spokesman for the Legionaries, said only: “We have learned some things about our founder’s life that are surprising and difficult for us to understand. We can confirm that there are some aspects of his life that were not appropriate for a Catholic priest.”

Some former members said they expected the order to renounce its founder, but Mr. Fair said: “He is the founder and he always will be the founder of the order. That’s one of the mysteries that we all see in life is that sometimes good things come out of less than perfect human beings.”

In Catholic religious orders, members are taught to identify with the spirituality and values of the founder. That was taken to an extreme in the Legionaries, said the Rev. Stephen Fichter, a priest in New Jersey who left the order after 14 years.

“Father Maciel was this mythical hero who was put on a pedestal and had all the answers,” Father Fichter said. “When you become a Legionarie, you have to read every letter Father Maciel ever wrote, like 15 or 16 volumes. To hear he’s been having this double life on the side, I just don’t see how they’re going to continue.”

Father Fichter, once the chief financial officer for the order, said he informed the Vatican three years ago that every time Father Maciel left Rome, “I always had to give him $10,000 in cash — $5,000 in American dollars and $5,000 in the currency of wherever he was going.”

Father Fichter added: “As Legionaries, we were taught a very strict poverty; if I went out of town and bought a Bic pen and a chocolate bar, I would have to turn in the receipts. And yet for Father Maciel there was never any accounting. It was always cash, never any paper trail. And because he was this incredible hero to us, we never even questioned it for a second.”

Mr. Fair said he had no comment about whether Father Maciel had misappropriated money, fathered a child or sexually abused young men.

The Legionaries, founded in 1941, have grown as the church in many countries has shrunk. It has 800 priests in 22 countries, and 70,000 members worldwide, many of whom are lay people in its affiliate, Regnum Christi.

Tom Hoopes, managing editor of The National Catholic Register, which is affiliated with the Legionaries, posted an apology on the Web on Tuesday for having dismissed the sexual abuse accusations, saying, “I’m sorry to the victims, who were victims twice.”

Anyone surprised? Again? When will people burn down the churches, take back all the riches stolen from the people and distribute these riches to the poorest people (which also made the biggest contributions)???

(CNN) — Oprah Winfrey once dubbed it the “greatest love story” she had ever heard: a boy held at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II and a girl on the outside who tossed him apples to keep him alive. They eventually married and grew old together.

Herman Rosenblat has acknowledged his Holocaust love story is fake: “I am sorry.”

It turns out the story of Herman and Roma Rosenblat isn’t true.

The two had told their love story for years and years, inspiring a book deal, an upcoming movie, and stories across the globe on television, in papers and on the Internet. A children’s book, “Angel Girl,” was also based on their love story.

When the couple appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” more than a decade ago, the famed host called it “the single greatest love story in 22 years of doing this show.”

But over the weekend, Herman Rosenblat issued a statement through his literary agent, Andrea Hurst, acknowledging the story of how he met his wife was made up.

“Why did I do that and write the story with the girl and the apple, because I wanted to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people, and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world,” he said in the statement.

“In my dreams, Roma will always throw me an apple, but I now know it is only a dream.”

Herman Rosenblat really was in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II — a subcamp of Buchenwald — and he really has been married to Roma for decades. Beyond that, the truth is murky.

Berkley Books immediately canceled publication of Rosenblat’s memoir, “Angel at the Fence,” which was set to be released in February.

“Berkley will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work,” Berkley spokesman Craig Burke said in a statement.

A movie version of the Rosenblats’ story — even though now proven a hoax — remains in the works. Atlantic Overseas Pictures says the movie is a fictionalized adaptation and that “the story retains its power to grip audiences worldwide.”

Many Holocaust scholars had long cast doubt on the Rosenblats’ story.

Professor Ken Waltzer, the director of Michigan State University’s Jewish Studies program, said he began raising questions to the agent and publisher in November, suggesting that the story was fabricated. But he says his numerous queries went unanswered.

He says he told the editor that the story is “at best embellished and perhaps invented.”

“The idea of a prisoner being able autonomously to approach the fence not just once, but every day at the same time, … none of it seemed plausible,” Waltzer says. “That fence was right next to the SS barracks, so to go to the fence, which was also punishable by death, was to risk death.”

In a letter to “The New Republic,” which first began questioning the validity of the Rosenblats’ story, Waltzer said he was also disturbed about why few others had come forward to point out holes in the couple’s account.

“Less understandable is the widespread belief in their story — by the culture makers, including the publisher and movie maker and many thousands of others who have encountered it over a decade,” he said. “Second, such belief suggests a broad illiteracy about the Holocaust and about experience in the camps — despite decades of books, serious memoirs, museums, and movies. This shakes this historian up.”

“This memoir was at the far end of implausibility, yet until yesterday, no one connected with packaging, promoting, and disseminating it asked questions about or investigated it. Some actively resisted such investigation and tried to shut mine down.”

New Republic special correspondent Gabriel Sherman told CNN another disturbing element is that Herman Rosenblat really is a Holocaust survivor who “didn’t need to embellish his love story, because his own story is so powerful.”

Sherman said Rosenblat was shot during a robbery in the 1990s at his workplace. When he was was in the hospital, Rosenblat said he had a vision from his mother to tell his love story. “From that moment on, he started telling his story in public,” Sherman said.

In his statement released over the weekend, Herman Rosenblat said, “To all [who] supported and believed in me and this story, I am sorry for all I have caused to you and everyone else in the world.

Holocaust scholars say they hope the revelation that the love story is fictitious doesn’t distract from the reality of the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany killed 6 million Jews.

“On the far extreme, something like this could give fuel to those who are in the business of denying that the Holocaust ever took place,” said David Marwell, director of The Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Anyone surprised?

Evangelist Billy Graham was hospitalized Saturday after tripping and falling over one of his dogs the night before at his home in western North Carolina, a hospital statement said.

Evangelist Billy Graham, pictured in 2005, has suffered a number of physical ailments.

Graham, 89, had discomfort and bruising from the accident Friday night. He was listed in fair condition at Mission Hospital, the facility said in a statement.

“His physicians report that X-rays showed no broken bones,” the statement said.

Doctors evaluated Graham’s condition late Friday, and the Southern Baptist minister chose to stay overnight because of the late hour, the hospital said. “According to his nurses, Mr. Graham had an uneventful night and was able to sleep.”

Graham hopes to return to his home in Montreat later Saturday, the hospital said.

In February, Graham had elective surgery to replace a shunt that maintains normal pressure in his head, the hospital said. The shunt was installed in 2000 to combat symptoms of hydrocephalus, a condition that causes a buildup of fluid on the brain, according to Graham’s Web site.

Graham also has faced prostate cancer and Parkinson’s disease. He underwent hip replacement surgery after fracturing his pelvis in a fall in 2004.

The founder of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association has preached to millions over six decades, and has provided counsel to generations of U.S. presidents, beginning with Harry S. Truman.

He will celebrate his 90th birthday November 7.

Graham fell

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Sept. 30 (UPI) — A poster with the headline “Jesus Loves You” put up by a student council president candidate at a Florida elementary school has prompted some criticism.

Lexi Hayward, 11, told WJXT-TV in Jacksonville that she just wants to promote her faith. The poster’s full text is “Jesus Loves You; Lexi For Prez.”

“My friends say it’s cool, and they’ll vote for me and stuff,” Lexi said.

So far, officials at Thunderbolt Elementary School in Fleming Island say they are letting the poster stay up.

“It’s a poster created by a student, not by the school, not by the district,” said Darlene Mahla, a spokeswoman for Clay County. “It doesn’t insult anyone. Again, it’s not inflammatory and it’s not what the law calls school-sponsored speech.”

The school has received at least one anonymous letter from someone who described herself as the mother of a Thunderbolt student. She said that although she is a Christian she finds the poster “scary.”

But most parents waiting outside the school Monday said they have no problems with Lexi’s campaign. One did say she could see some people might find it offensive.

So… is it offensive or not? I find it offensive. If someone would have set up a sign saying “Mohammed loves you, Hamid for Prez” there surely would have been negative reactions. What’s the difference? Religion is religion, whatever belief you have. There is no place in schools for religious superstitions.

A few days ago I read in the newspaper about a fraction of the right wing voters forming a new party, called the “humanist party”. I jumped in joy, because I thought I would find a political party that shares my ideas for welfare and economy, but would exclude religion and church…. I was so wrong.

In Mexico, the right wing party, PAN are generally deeply religious. I think that politics and religion don’t go to well together… look at the middle east, look at Israel, look at the US, etc. What the world needs is politicians that set religion aside and work for the benefit of the people, not the clergy – be it catholic, evangelist, jewish, muslim. Unfortunately church (everywhere) has too much power and money, so it will naturally attract powermongers (e.g. politicians).

The Humanist Party then? Looking at their ideas here, one really gets fooled by their smooth talking. But suddenly they start talking about moral and ethics, that people should “act according to the ethics of society, set down in the legislature”…. what the hell is that? Obey the law – good. Act according to the law, because the law automatically sets the ethics rules for people? Not good. They also say that one should respect life. That’s great. Thet say that one should respect life from it’s conception until death. Now that is wacked.

Life starts – in my eyes – when a child is delivered. Not before that. Not after that. It’s fun to see church say that life starts at conception, but a child isn’t part of church until it’s baptized. Meaning, that life starts at baptism. When you go get a driver’s license, they seldom ask for your date of conception. At least, that hasn’t happened to me yet. They ask for your birth date, because common sense tells us that when you are delivered, is when life begins. I believe abortion rights should be taken with much responsibility. Nevertheless, it is ALWAYS a woman’s choice to keep her child or not. The respect for life doesn’t cover the woman? This new party is bullshit. They try to set the woman on a pedestal but at the same time restrict one of her foremost and most primal rights – the rights to her body.