Pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protesters entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on Saturday evening, disrupting the Easter Vigil service with shouts of “Free, free Palestine”. The protest was eventually drowned out by singing in the cathedral, as the congregation joined the choir in singing “Hallelujah.”
The protest began in Times Square earlier in the day for “Palestinian Land Day” commemorating violent protests by Arabs of the Galilee region in 1976. The day is usually commemorated by violent and frequently deadly protests by Arabs in Israel.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, acknowledged the protests in his homily, saying, there was a cloud over the holiday due to ongoing war, specifically between Israel and Hamas.
“We’re not naïve, there’s darkness in the world. There’s darkness in our country,” Dolan said. “There’s darkness in our beloved city, there’s darkness in our hearts.”
The protesters were quickly taken out of the service.
Breitbart News reported in December, that pro-Palestinian protests have targeted symbols of Christianity around the world, disrupting Christmas tree lightings and other Christmas celebrations.
Local Spectrum News NY 1 reported that pro-Palestinian protesters had also targeted St. Patrick’s Cathedral during Christmas mass in December.
Earlier this month, pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted a sermon by Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The group of students, who said they represented the Atlanta University Consortium (AUC) and the Black community of Atlanta, removed their jackets and other articles of clothing, revealing matching t-shirts that said, “Stop Arming Israel.”
The congregation was once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who serves as senior pastor.
Ironically, Warnock is not a supporter of Israel. Warnock has described Jesus as a “poor Palestinian prophet”.In a 2018 sermon, after the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Warnock gave a sermon in which he accused Israeli security personnel of shooting innocent Palestinians “like birds of prey. In 2019, Warnock signed a statement about the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories that compared Israel to apartheid and South Africa.
In February, followers of a neofascist group hung a pro-Palestinian banner on the fence outside St. James Episcopal Church in Florence, Italy. Ironically, the Episcopal Church is a strong supporter of a Palestinian State inside Israel.
