Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee July 22 released an interim staff report alleging the FBI surveilled a Catholic priest after he declined to speak about conversations he had with a suspected neo-Nazi defendant, a self-described “radical traditional Catholic clerical fascist” the FBI was investigating for making violent threats online. In a press release, the committee said, “The FBI’s Richmond Field Office interviewed a priest affiliated with a local Catholic church to discuss a subject under investigation whose case served as the basis for the Richmond memorandum,” a controversial leaked and retracted FBI memo dated Jan. 23, 2023, that discussed “radical traditionalist” Catholics. The House Judiciary Committee interim report said the priest subjected to FBI surveillance is a member of the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, a religious order the Vatican has described as having an irregular communion with the rest of the Catholic Church. The religious order maintains a chapel in Richmond, Virginia, where the priest was serving at the time. The SSPX is characterized by its adherence to liturgical forms in use prior to the Second Vatican Council, but rejects much of the council’s teachings and has its own bishops, unlike similar traditionalist groups that are in full communion with the pope and fully accept the council. The report said that after the priest in 2022 “declined to share information about the subject, the FBI surveilled the priest and opened an investigative assessment into him.”
via osvnews: REPORT: FBI SURVEILLED SSPX PRIEST AMID PROBE OF SUSPECTED NEO-NAZI’S PLANS FOR VIOLENCE