After nearly two weeks offline, Google has restored an influential Catholic website following a review into an alleged violation of “hate speech.”

As of July 23, Messa in Latino (MiL) has returned to its normal online operations: publishing news and analysis on the Catholic Church, especially with an emphasis on Vatican affairs. MiL – arguably the foremost Italian language site of its kind – had been abruptly taken down on July 11.

The brief email sent from blogger.com, run by Google, informed MiL that the site had been taken down with immediate effect due to an unspecified violation of its “hate speech policy.”

No further information was given, and MiL noted today that they are still without any more precise information about what caused the site’s temporary removal.

“The real reasons are unknown,” the editors wrote. “We can only assume, on the basis that in the weeks immediately preceding single posts had been removed (but then restored), always with the same very generic motivation, that some malevolent reader (we know of someone who bragged about it) targeted us, repeatedly ‘flagging’ our content.”

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 among the Anglosphere, was highly influential, serving as a key resource for Vatican observers due to its reliably well-placed sources.

MiL had garnered over 1 million page views last month alone, and has been 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.

Following its July 11 strike and removal, the editors filed an emergency court appeal. The story garnered notable media interest, and – according to the editors – “it became the subject of two parliamentary questions: one to Strasbourg, the other in Rome (because freedom of the press, in definitive, affects everyone).”

The editors hit back firmly at the Google-driven censorship writing that

by hitting us, the system revealed that no one is safe from this creeping and surreptitious censorship, which, despite the absence of any crime, it is subcontracted to unnamed private oligarchs, to billionaires in sweatshirts burgeoning. Hodie mihi, cras tibi: not even a cooking site will be safe during the day in which it suffered a flood of malicious signals against the roast recipes from some vegan fanatic.

Google has a history of censorship of individuals promoting content that 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 2024, 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.