(LifeSiteNews) — A leading and highly influential Catholic site, Messa in Latino, was deleted by Google on Friday for alleged and unspecified violations of its “hate speech” policy.
In a brief email sent from blogger.com – run by Google – the editors of Messa in Latino (MIL) were informed that the site had been taken offline with immediate effect.
The email stated that “your blog titled ‘MiL – Messainlatino.it’ was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have made the URL https://blog.messainlatino.it unavailable to blog readers.”
The reason given for the sudden removal was due to an unspecified violation of its “hate speech policy.”
“If we feel that a blog’s content does not fit within the expectations of our policy, we no longer allow it to be publicly available,” the email read.
The Italian language site MIL has been online since 2007, with the editors having published 22,000 articles on Catholic Church news, with a particular focus on Vatican affairs. The site, though perhaps less known amongst the Anglosphere, was highly influential, serving as a key resource for Vatican observers due to its reliably well-placed sources.
MIL was at the forefront of breaking key stories in recent years, including the scandal surrounding Father Marko Rupnik, allegations of potential conclave rule reformations, Traditionis Custodes, and a public billboard campaign defending the traditional Mass.
As reported by the editor, MIL received over 1 million visits last month alone, a particularly sizable amount given that Catholic media traffic is largest amongst English speakers.
No details of possible violations of the policy were outlined by the Blogger team. However, MIL suggested that the Google owned company had taken objections to certain posts which promoted Catholic teaching and warned about dangers of Freemasonry.
MIL stated:
As a mere indication, we can only assume that this has something to do with the fact that, in recent weeks, individual articles had already been removed (but then reinstated by Blogger.com itself, at our request), the content of which was: an interview with Monsignor Strickland against the admission of women to the diaconate; a study by Prof. Corrado Gnerre on the history of Freemasonry and its condemnation by the Church; a reference to the official doctrine of the Church regarding gay pride; and finally, a post from over ten years ago with a video of the founder of the Neocatechumenal movement.
The Catholic outlet has already taken legal notice seeking reinstatement of the site, while warning that the sudden cancellation of the site had wider implications. “It is clear that if this is how things start, no one can feel safe expressing their thoughts, even if they are in line with the official doctrine of the world’s most widespread religion.”
Google has a history of censorship of individuals promoting content which it takes objection to. Censorship was especially notable on YouTube – also owned by Google – during the COVID lockdowns, particularly with relationship to the abortion-tainted COVID-19 injections. The company has a history of discriminating against certain content on the basis of political viewpoint on topics such as abortion, gender, COVID-19, climate change, and election integrity, including acting directly against LifeSiteNews on numerous occasions.
Last year, Google de-platformed a woman after she sent a pro-life email, cutting her off from accessing over 11 years of her stored emails, photographs, calendars, contacts, and other data without warning. Google refused to state which acceptable use policies she had violated, stating only, “Due to security reasons we are unable to share the exact policy which was violated.”
As reported by LifeSite, in February last year, media analysis firm AllSides Technologies Inc. found that 63 percent of Google News search results were from left-wing or left-leaning sources as opposed to just 6 percent that were right-wing or right-leaning and 16 percent in the political center.
