It looks like Pope Benedict’s initiative to bring the Society of St. Pius X back into the Catholic Church was ill-advised.

ROME - A priest in an ultraconservative society recently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI has defended a bishop in the group and joined him in expressing doubts about the Holocaust.

While making more cautious remarks than Bishop Richard Williamson, the Rev. Floriano Abrahamowicz echoed, in an interview published yesterday by an Italian daily, the prelate’s doubts that Jews were gassed during World War II.

“I know gas chambers existed at least to disinfect, I can’t say if anybody was killed in them or not,” Abrahamowicz told La Tribuna di Treviso, a newspaper in northern Italy.

Contacted by phone in Treviso, Abrahamowicz said the report of his interview was accurate, but declined to comment on his remarks.

Benedict lifted Williamson’s excommunication and those of three other members of the Society of St. Pius X last week as part of his efforts to bring back into the Church the group, which opposes many of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.