Argentina Boots Holocaust Denying Bishop

The traditionalist bishop whose denials of the Holocaust embarrassed the Vatican was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days.

The Interior Ministry's immigration agency ordered Richard Williamson to abandon the country because he "has concealed the true motive for his stay in the country" because he said he was an employee of a non-governmental group rather than declaring "his true activity" as the director of a seminary.

Williamson's views about the Holocaust created an uproar last month when Pope Benedict XVI lifted his excommunication and that of three other bishops consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as part of a process meant to heal a rift with ultraconservatives.

The flap led the Vatican to demand that Williamson recant before he can be admitted as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. It also prompted the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, founded by Lefebvre, to dismiss Williamson as director of the La Reja seminary in Argentina and to distance itself from his views.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had no comment on the Argentine action. A person who answered the phone at the Society of St. Pius X said Williamson was still in the country, then hung up.