Katrina row priest asks Pope not to promote him to bishop

An Austrian priest who created a controversy by suggesting that God punished New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina because of the city’s sins said he will ask the Pope to rescind his promotion.

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent appointment of the conservative Father Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, to auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria’s third largest city, sparked an outcry among Roman Catholics who warned it could prompt people to leave the church.