Facebook has restricted two of The Irish Catholic newspaper’s posts saying they are suspected of breaching ‘hate speech’ and ‘violence and incitement’ community standards respectively even though the two posts did no such thing.

The first post linking an article with the headline ‘Priest will continue blessing planes despite airport ban’, was flagged for potentially going against their standards for ‘violence and incitement’.

The second post, highlighting the Catholic Education Partnership’s (CEP) stance on defending the integrity of faith-based programmes in Catholic schools which ran under the headline ‘Catholic schools staunch on religious cert requirements as INTO put on pressure’ was flagged as potentially contravening their ‘Hate speech’ standards.

Facebook states: “We define hate speech as language that attacks people based on their: Race, ethnicity, national origin or caste; Religious affiliation; Sexual orientation; Sex, gender or gender identity; Serious disabilities or diseases.”

A review has been requested by The Irish Catholic but no response has yet been received. There was also no response from their press office.