Pope Benedict XVI met with a holocaust-denier yesterday. Bishop Richard Williamson? No, Nancy Pelosi.

A Pelosi-led delegation of Catholic Democrats who dismiss the moral significance of millions upon millions of abortions turned up at the Vatican yesterday.

Last month these same abortion-holocaust deniers had lectured Benedict for mishandling the flap over Richard Williamson’s lifted excommunication.

Seizing on a chance to embarrass the Pope, fifty Catholic Democrats, Rosa DeLauro and George Miller among them, wrote a letter to him demanding a “clarification” in the Williamson matter. (He had already done so, but they felt it just wasn’t emphatic enough.)

“Bishop Williamson has said as recently as this past November that, ‘historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy by Adolf Hitler.’ Yet, the Holocaust is a verifiable fact and as people of good will would agree, one of the darkest chapters in our history as a human family. There are still thousands of people amongst us — Jews and non-Jews — who can attest through eye-witness accounts to the horrors of the Holocaust,” they wrote in part.

“As a spiritual leader and the head of the Catholic Church, we believe it is vital that you publicly state your unequivocal position on this matter so that it is clear where the Church stands on one of the most consequential events of the 20th century…”

William Delahunt, who pulls down a 100% rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League, piously explained to the Boston Globe the pressing need for this letter of rebuke. “The moral authority of the church is important to retain, and having those statements out there was unacceptable,” he said.

Pro-abortion Catholic Democrats don’t normally warm to the cause of preserving the Church’s moral authority, and certainly not to the concept of excommunication. But in Williamson they had finally found a Catholic not fit for entrance to their communion line.

They would of course say that an important difference exists between them and Williamson. And they are right: He opined egregiously about a historical evil; they finance and facilitate a contemporary one. Engaging in appalling historical speculation about past evil is bad; paying for a present evil as they do is worse.

It is rich that after slapping Benedict’s hand over Williamson they would tumble over themselves to kiss it on Wednesday. To its credit, the Vatican denied them a photo-op, though quickly after the meeting Pelosi cranked up the PC wind machine to spin it as constructive.

“It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, today. In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger, and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show His Holiness a photograph of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.”

Global warming? The last time I recall Benedict broaching the subject of global warming he pointedly observed that environmentalists need a “human ecology” with which to stop killing unborn babies.

The Vatican’s post-meeting description was diplomatically devastating in its clinical tone: “His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

In January pro-abortion Catholic Democrats angrily asked if the Vatican would force Williamson to recant. This month the Pope in effect asked them if they will. Will Pelosi, DeLauro, and company disavow their views? Or will they continue to rationalize, minimize and revise the massive, ongoing holocaust of unborn human life?