By the Archbishop of Selsey
When the Provincial Court of Málaga acquitted two Catholic priests and a journalist accused of “hate speech” for criticising radical Islam, it did more than correct a miscarriage of justice. It restored, if only momentarily, a flicker of sanity to a Europe increasingly afraid of its own Christian conscience.
The Crime of Speaking Clearly
Fr Custodio Ballester and Fr Jesús Calvo were not zealots of intolerance, but witnesses to truth. Their supposed crime was to say aloud what many silently know: that ideologies rooted in coercion and violence cannot be reconciled with divine charity or human freedom.¹ For this they were denounced by the Association of Muslims Against Islamophobia and dragged through the courts for nearly a decade.
The priests were accused of violating Article 510 of the Spanish Penal Code, which criminalises the incitement of hatred.² Yet their statements, though forthright, did not call for violence or discrimination; they called for repentance and discernment. To confuse the two is to make law itself a servant of error.
In his article The Impossible Dialogue with Islam, Ballester did not vilify Muslims; he questioned the ideology that inspires persecution of Christians in the Middle East and suppression of conscience in Europe.³ For this, he was first condemned by a lower court and only later vindicated by a higher one. How telling that in modern Spain, the plea for reasoned dialogue is branded “hate,” while genuine intolerance parades as virtue.
The Dictatorship of Relativism
The court’s ruling on 20 October 2025 rightly concluded that “not even intolerant or offensive speech loses protection if it does not promote hatred or violence.”⁴ This principle—so obvious in the light of natural law—has become controversial in a Europe that prizes sensitivity above truth. The acquittal is therefore not only legal but moral: it re-affirms the right to speak the truth even when the world calls it unkind.
We are witnessing what Pope Benedict XVI called a “dictatorship of relativism”⁵—an order where every conviction must apologise for existing, and every dogma must disguise itself as dialogue. Such relativism disarms the Church, replacing her bold confession with timid sentiment. When the priest is forbidden to name evil, society forgets how to distinguish it.
Freedom Ordered to Truth
True freedom of speech is not the liberty to wound, but the liberty to warn. Christian charity requires clarity; silence in the face of error is not compassion but complicity. The Málaga court, perhaps unwittingly, has upheld a profoundly Catholic truth: that freedom detached from truth is licence, but freedom exercised for truth is holiness.
Fr Ballester, speaking outside the courthouse, declared: “If proclaiming the Gospel in public becomes illegal, Spain will cease to be the land of martyrs and become the land of the mute.”⁶ His words recall the courage of St Vincent Ferrer and St John of Ávila, who also faced powers that feared the light of truth. The question before modern Europe is the same: shall we suffer to speak, or consent to be silent?
A Call to Christian Witness
The outcome in Málaga should strengthen every Christian who dares to defend faith and reason in public life. It proves that truth can still be spoken, even when costly. Yet the length and bitterness of the trial remind us that the battle is not legal but spiritual. What is on trial in our age is not merely expression—it is the Word Himself, “made flesh and dwelling among us.”⁷
When laws of “tolerance” are turned against the Gospel, Christians must respond not with resentment, but with steadfastness. Our answer must be witness. For Christ has told us: “The truth shall make you free.”⁸ But He did not say it would make us safe.
Nuntiatoria article for background
Footnotes
¹ “Freedom of speech and religion in play as Spanish priest prosecuted for denouncing radical Islam,” Catholic World Report, 3 Oct 2025.
² Código Penal de España, art. 510 (Incitación al odio).
³ Fr Custodio Ballester, El diálogo imposible con el Islam, 2017.
⁴ “Spanish court acquits priests and journalist accused of hate crime for criticising radical Islam,” Catholic Herald, 20 Oct 2025.
⁵ Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at the Pro Eligendo Pontifice Mass, 18 April 2005.
⁶ Abogados Cristianos press statement, Málaga, 20 Oct 2025.
⁷ John 1:14.
⁸ John 8:32.
