FBI needs to remove anti-Catholic ‘cell’ still operating in agency, says prominent Catholic org

The head of a prominent U.S. Catholic organization accused the FBI of harboring an anti-Catholic “cell” and urged government officials that it be “purged” from the law enforcement agency.

The comments come in the wake of a U.S. House report showing the FBI abused its power in targeting Catholics as potential domestic terrorists.

“It is painfully clear that there is an anti-Catholic cell group within the FBI,” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement to The Lion. “Most alarming, even after the release of the evidence showing how compromised certain units in the FBI have become, the Report concludes that ‘the FBI still apparently desires to convey the outrageous message that some Catholic Americans with traditional beliefs pose a domestic threat to our country.’”

The report that Donohue cites in his statement was released on Monday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

In that report, committee members said that “the FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists” when its Richmond field office issued a memorandum about setting up a counterintelligence operation against so-called “traditional” Catholics.

The operation was to include undercover agents and cultivate sources within the church itself to spy on members.

Donahue charges that next up on the agenda for the FBI was to target “mainline parishes” and local religious leaders inside dioceses.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray in April, Donohue warned that the FBI was going “into new, and disturbing territory,” by its investigation into Catholics.   

The findings by the House Select Committee seem to reinforce Donohue’s concerns.  

The Catholic league president noted in his statement to The Lion that the FBI didn’t target left-wing Catholics. 

“No, the only ones on their radar were those who are ‘pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists,’” said Donohue, quoting from the House report.  

Another Christian pro-life group previously made similar charges against the FBI.  

Rev. James Harden, whose pro-life pregnancy center was firebombed last year, told The Lion in October that the active hostility from the Biden administration points to something more significant than just a hostile presidency. 

“The pro-abortion attacks on pro-life groups point to something deeper. The FBI and DOJ slow-walked investigations and refused to indict terrorists targeting pro-life groups for destruction,” Harden said via email to The Lion. 

Indeed, in July 2022, Harden said the Biden administration was targeting pro-life pregnancy centers, using the Department of Justice (DOJ) to try to investigate such centers for “fraud.” 

In fact, it was the executive order by Biden, Harden believes, that led to the scrutiny by the DOJ of pro-life groups and encouraged radical leftist and their violence against crisis pregnancy centers. 

Donohue called on the House Select Committee to hold a new set of hearings to investigate the end goal of the FBI operation targeting Catholics. 

He said he’s unconvinced by FBI explanations that seemingly “blamed the Richmond Field Office for everything,” and believes that it’s damning that the FBI waited until the media revealed the existence of the FBI memo before it took action. 

At that time the FBI deleted the Richmond field office’s memorandum on Catholics and scrubbed everything related to it from their computer system, said Donahue. 

“There is an anti-Catholic cell group in the FBI. It needs to be purged,” Donohue told The Lion.