British Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson has been convicted in a German court of denying the Holocaust in a television interview.

A court in the Bavarian city of Regensburg on Friday found Williamson guilty of incitement for saying in a 2008 interview with Swedish TV that he did not believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during the Second World War.

Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson, shown in an interview with Sweden's public broadcaster, said in 2008 that historical evidence "is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers." ((SVT/Associated Press)) Denying the Holocaust is a criminal offence in Germany. The court ordered Williamson to pay a fine equivalent to $13,670 Cdn.

The ultra-conservative bishop was barred by his church order from attending Friday's proceedings or making statements to the media. He belongs to the controversial Society of St. Pius X.

His lawyer, Matthias Lossmann, said after the court ruling that Williamson has yet to decide whether he will appeal.

In the interview, Williamson said historical evidence "is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."

The court last year ordered Williamson to pay a fine equal to $16,404 Cdn and avoid a trial. He appealed, forcing his case to be tried publicly.

Lossmann said Williamson, who lives in Britain, had explicitly asked the Swedish television crew conducting the interview not to broadcast it in Germany.

Shown through internet

In issuing her ruling, Judge Karin Frahm reduced Williamson's fine, saying the bishop could not have expected the clip to show up on YouTube and be seen directly in Germany through the internet, court spokesman Bernhard Schneider said.

The contentious interview aired in January 2009, just days before Pope Benedict XVI reinstated Williamson after 20 years of excommunication.

The Vatican had imposed the church's most severe discipline, excommunication, on Williamson and three other bishops 20 years ago because they had been elevated to bishop's rank by a renegade, ultra-conservative church official, the late archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The decision to reinstate Williamson sparked outrage in the world's Jewish community and prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel to make a rare and public demand that Benedict make a "very clear" rejection of Holocaust denials.

On Friday, the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors said it welcomed the ruling as "a symbol of modern German determination to prohibit the dissemination of Holocaust denial on its soil."

Six million Jews were killed during the Nazi Holocaust, many of them slain in gas chambers.