A Spanish priest who had been facing a multi‑year prison sentence for calling radical Islam “dangerous” and “unacceptable” has been cleared by a court in Málaga. The verdict comes after he, another Catholic clergyman, and a journalist were charged with hate‑speech offenses in 2021 for an article they wrote in 2016.
Father Custodio Ballester had written a piece titled “The Impossible Dialogue with Islam.” The piece was a sharp critique of a 2016 pastoral letter by Cardinal Juan José Omella that promoted a “necessary dialogue” with Muslim communities. Ballester argued that Christians in Muslim‑majority countries face persecution and even payments like the historical jizya tax, and that the idea of true dialogue is unrealistic.
The Málaga court said that the statements did not meet the legal definition of hate speech. “No matter how offensive a statement may be, it is not automatically punishable,” the judge wrote. The court cleared Ballester, Fr. Jesús Calvo and journalist Armando Robles of the charges.
Ballester thanked God and “the Christian people” for prayers and support that he said helped in the fight for free expression. “I feel a moral obligation to speak the truth,” he told Fox News Digital. “In Spain, telling the truth about radical Islam is treated like a crime,” he added.
He warned that Spain’s hate‑crime law is being used to silence Christian voices. He said the law’s penalties are comparable to those for serious offenses such as rape, and that complaints about comments about Islam are treated as hate crimes while Christian criticism is treated as freedom of speech. The prosecutor’s office, represented by Miguel Ángel Aguilar, says it will appeal the decision.
Ballester sees the case as a sign of a broader cultural shift in Europe that he believes is pushing Christianity out of public life. “In the United States, freedom still has meaning,” he told reporters. “When I was in Washington at the March for Life and saw the Korean War memorial, the words ‘Freedom is not free’ were clear.”
The court’s ruling means the priests and the journalist are not sentenced to prison. The case, which spilled into the headlines over a year longer ago, is a reminder that debates over hate‑speech laws and religious freedom remain hot topics in Spain and beyond.
Source: New York Post
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