The FBI’s targeting of some Catholics as “extremists” was not the work of a single rogue field office, as previously claimed, but involved multiple offices, according to an internal FBI document released by a Congressional committee on Wednesday.
Last February a whistleblower leaked a heavily redacted report from the FBI’s Richmond office: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
The document defined “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as those who attend the Latin Mass and who allegedly frequently adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Judiciary Committee in July that the report was “a single product by a single field office,” and he was aghast when he discovered it and ordered it withdrawn.
However, a less-redacted version of that Richmond document indicated that multiple field offices were involved, including Los Angeles and Portland.
The House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan, now wants more information from the FBI on how broad this investigation really was.
The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, visited the Christian community in Haifa on Wednesday in the wake of the recent intrusions of Jewish radical groups into Christian holy places and other incidents involving violence against Christians.
The Israeli President said, “in recent months, we have seen serious occurrences against Christian denominations in the Holy Land. Our brothers and sisters, Christian citizens, feel that they are under attack in their places of prayer, cemeteries, and streets. I consider this extremist phenomenon unacceptable in every respect. This phenomenon must be eradicated, and I am grateful to the police and other law enforcement agencies for taking this matter seriously.”
Many members of the Christian community in Haifa had taken to the streets to protest the attacks on Christians and Christian Holy sites. The Latin and Orthodox Patriarchs and Heads of Churches have been meeting with the Israeli police of Jerusalem to ensure the taking of necessary measures to prevent further incidents.
An army veteran has pled “not guilty” to breaking an abortion exclusion zone by praying silently near an abortion clinic in the UK.
Adam Smith-Connor was standing in silent prayer on Orphir Road, Bournemouth when he was questioned as to “the nature of his prayer”.
He said it was for those facing difficult decisions relating to abortion, as well as for the child that he lost to an abortion that he now regrets paying for.
Local authorities issued him with a fine.
Disputing the charges, Smith-Connor says he is being prosecuted “for a thought crime”.
“I am accused of breaching an abortion clinic buffer zone by praying for my son Jacob and other victims of abortion, for their families and for abortion clinic staff on Ophir Road Bournemouth. I did not approach anyone, I did not speak to anyone, I did not breach any one’s privacy. I simply stood silently. I am being tried for the prayerful thoughts I held in my head,” said Adam Smith-Connor upon exiting the court.
Luxury car brand Porsche is facing criticism after the company released an advertisement that edited out a massive statue of Jesus Christ that overlooks the city of Lisbon, Portugal.
The controversy mirrors an incident in 2017 when Supermarket chain Lidl apologised for airbrushing Christian crosses out of images of the island of Santorini’s domed blue churches on some of its Greek-themed food packaging.
The German car company launched a campaign last week celebrating six decades of its classic Porsche 911. It released a roughly two-and-a-half-minute ad depicting the evolution of the car.
About 44 seconds into a version of the video posted on the company’s website, a car drives across the screen against the backdrop of the bridge and river that the Cristo Rei statue overlooks, but the 92-feet-tall statue of Jesus was absent from atop the 269-feet-tall concrete pedestal that remains visible across the river.
Porsche subsequently apologised: “We are truly sorry and can fully understand the hurt this has caused. This film has been removed.”
On Sunday afternoon, Porsche uploaded a new version of the ad in which the statue is restored.
A Catholic priest in the Indian state of Goa has been granted “anticipatory bail” after police registered a criminal case against him for allegedly “hurting Hindu sentiments” in remarks he made about a Hindu king during a Sunday Mass in July.
Hindu groups had staged demonstrations in front of the police station calling for criminal charges to be brought against Father Bolmax Pereira, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier Church in Chicalim in the Archdiocese of Goa.
Pereira was quoted in the Mass posted on YouTube saying that 17th-century Hindu king Chatrapati Shivaji “was a national hero but not a god.”
Hindu nationalist groups demanded his arrest for offending their “religious sentiments.”
Anti-Christian hatred and attacks are becoming more and more common in Israel, as some are calling the levels of violence a “crisis” for the conservative government led by Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop and soon-to-be Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has spoken out regarding the growing anti-Christian attacks in Israel in a recent interview with Vatican News.
“Let us say that these clashes, these spats, these accusations, these insults, are not new. But the exponential increase in these phenomena, especially in the Jerusalem area, in the Old City, has become a matter of concern and an issue on the agenda that worries both the Christian community and the Israeli authorities,” Archbishop Pizzaballa said.
He noted that while authorities in Israel have publicly condemned the rise in anti-Christian attacks, their promises to act have yet to yield much in the way of real results.
A pastor and his family have been jailed for allegedly luring people to Christianity in violation of an anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where Christians only make up less than 1% of the 200 million population.
The pastor, Harendra Singh, and his wife, Priya, were arrested by the police and jailed along with their 3-year-old son on July 31 after they were accused of hosting a prayer meeting in their home.
Even though India’s Constitution “guarantees religious freedom to all persons,” Uttar Pradesh’s state legislators explained in a copy of the law that their anti-conversion statute was necessary to protect “gullible persons.”
Despite violating international human rights law, 12 of India’s 28 states, including Uttar Pradesh, have anti-conversion laws as of February, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The Catholic Archbishop of Armagh asked the Government to push for the release of a bishop falsely imprisoned in Nicaragua.
Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, the Bishop of Matagalpa, has been a prominent voice of protest against the suppression of human rights that has occurred in Nicaragua as the regime of president Daniel Ortega has become increasingly authoritarian in recent years.
The bishop was sentenced to 26 years in prison in February after being convicted of a series of trumped up charges including treason.
Archbishop Eamon Martin wrote to the Tánaiste to express his “grave concern at the situation in Nicaragua, and the persecution of members of the clergy as well as others who express criticism of the regime”.
The archbishop said 222 political prisoners were deported to the US and stripped of their citizenship shortly after their departure.
“However, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez… who had been under house arrest since August 2022, refused to board the plane,” he said. “He was subsequently detained, tried and given a 26-year sentence for offences of conspiracy, spreading false news, obstruction of justice and contempt of court.”
Parents who never married were significantly more likely to have split up compared to those who married at some stage, whether before or after their child was born, an analysis by the Marriage Foundation has found.
Data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study showed 46% of first-born children aged 14-years-old were not living with both natural parents.
Divorce accounts for less than a third of all family breakdown, rising from 10% of breakdown involving first-born children aged 3 to 31% of breakdown involving children aged 14.
Among natural parents of 14-year-olds still living together, 84% were married.
This means while marriage is responsible for the majority of family stability (84%), marriage is only responsible for the minority of family breakdown (31%).
In terms of raw data, 60% of parents who never married split up compared to 21% of those who married before their child was born and 32% who married afterwards. But even when considering a wide range of socio-demographic controls the probability of splitting up was still 46% for never married parents, significantly higher than the 26% for those marrying before and 27% for those marrying after their child was born.
Local authorities in the UK have filed criminal charges against an army veteran for praying silently within an abortion exclusion zone.
Adam Smith-Connor was issued a fixed penalty notice last December for “praying for his deceased son” a month earlier near an abortion facility in Bournemouth where an exclusion or “buffer zone” is in place.
His first hearing will take place on 9th August and he is expected to enter a “not guilty” plea.
“Nobody should be prosecuted for silent prayer,” said Adam Smith-Connor, upon hearing the news of his prosecution.
“It is unfathomable that in an apparently free society, I am being criminally charged on the basis of what I expressed silently, in the privacy of my own mind. I served for 20 years in the army reserves, including a tour in Afghanistan, to protect the fundamental freedoms that this country is built upon. I continue that spirit of service as a health care professional and church volunteer. It troubles me greatly to see our freedoms eroded to the extent that thoughtcrimes are now being prosecuted in the UK”.
