FBI Has Overseen Terminations, Resignations Tied to Anti-Catholic Activities, Director Reveals

FBI Director Kash Patel revealed Tuesday that the bureau has seen terminations and resignations related to an anti-Catholic memo authored by its Richmond field office in early 2023.

Patel revealed the information in response to questioning from Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) during an oversight hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“There have been terminations related to this and resignations,” Patel said. He did not name specific FBI officials who were fired or left the agency because of the anti-Catholic memo.

Patel explained how the FBI reformed its sourcing practices after seeking out potential informants to target Catholic churches. He said the FBI would ensure sources are not put into houses of worship unless there is an ongoing terrorism threat.

Patel also provided lawmakers with details on the FBI’s active investigations into anti-Catholic hate crime incidents across various cities.

“We have 60 anti-Catholic hate crime incidences reported to us that are being investigated,” Patel said.

“We have five hate crime investigations with anti-Catholic bias ongoing currently in the cities of Kansas City, Louisville, Houston, Nashville and Richmond,” Patel added.

“Any ideologically based attack against any faith, as a man of faith myself, will not be tolerated, and the full resources of the FBI are committed to all of it.”

Since 2020, there have been hundreds of attacks on Catholic parishes nationwide. Anti-Catholic attacks spiked following the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade and send abortion legalization back to the states.

A harrowing anti-Catholic attack happened last month at Annunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis during the parish’s mass to begin the school year. Transgender gunman Robin Westman killed two kids and wounded numerous others. Westman shot dozens of bullets through the windows of the parish, which he targeted specifically to maximize the number of child casualties. Before the shooting, the gunman put a picture of Jesus Christ on a target board and drew upside down crosses onto his weapons, two clear signs of anti-Christian sentiments. Westman also appears to have shot three rounds into a statue of the Holy Family outside the parish before committing suicide.

At his confirmation hearing in January, Patel promised Hawley he would root out anti-Catholic bias from the FBI. To that end, Patel has turned over documents to congressional investigators showing the FBI’s effort to target traditionalist Catholics went well-beyond a single document created by the Richmond field office, contradicting former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony to the contrary.

The Richmond office’s anti-Catholic memo became a scandal in February 2023 when it was leaked to a former FBI agent who publicized its contents. The document equated traditionalist Catholics with hateful extremists and claimed “radical” Catholics were emerging as a domestic terrorism threat.

It was quickly retracted because of the public backlash and Wray later attributed it to the actions of a single field office. The anti-Catholic memo primarily relied on analysis from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leftist organization known for smearing conservatives as “extremists.”

It was circulated to more than 1,000 FBI employees and multiple field offices were involved in its development. A second anti-Catholic memo was drafted and never publicized because of the backlash to the Richmond field office’s initial memo.