An Irish journalist who was targeted in an anthrax scare this week said he believed there was an “anti-Catholic motivation” behind the incident.
David Quinn, a columnist for Ireland’s Sunday Independent and Irish Catholic newspapers, opened a suspicious package Sept. 16 at the Dublin offices of the Iona Institute, a thinktank he founded in 2006.
The package contained a white powder and an anonymous message that read “Happy Anthrax Mr David Quinn [and] Bitch O’Brein.”
The last two words appeared to refer to Irish Times columnist Breda O’Brien, a patron of the Iona Institute, which promotes “the advancement and promotion of the Christian religion, its social and moral values.”
After the police were alerted, they requested assistance from army bomb disposal experts, who declared the scene safe after a few hours.
Quinn told The Pillar in a Sept. 18 phone interview that the authorities had yet to identify the substance, though it was unlikely to be anthrax, a biological agent that can cause serious illness or death if touched or inhaled.
Asked to comment on the possible motive for the incident, he said: “I’d be amazed if it’s not somebody with a big dislike of the Church. It named both me and Breda O’Brien, who tends to write from a pro-Catholic perspective like me.”
“I tend to branch out further and write about other issues that might make me a target, but she doesn’t. So I take it it’s somebody with a big hang-up about the Catholic Church.”
Quinn said that he and the institute had long received “anti-Catholic hate mail,” particularly at times of public anger following reports on clerical abuse scandals or amid national referendums on abortion or gay marriage.
“We receive occasional death threats, but none that are proper, real death threats. But again, full of mal-intent,” he said.
“This has been going on and off the whole time since we began, so long before social media really kicked off. Social media simply magnified things that were already there. This, I guess, is the worst incident.”
Quinn likened receiving the package with the unknown substance to a bomb scare.
“If a suspect bomb package came into your office, there would be a 99.9% chance that it’s not a bomb. But it would have to be investigated just in case,” he said. “They couldn’t tell you: ‘Just throw that in the bin and forget about it.’”
The Iona Institute is currently in the news as the barrister Maria Steen, who is linked to the organization, is seeking to stand in October’s presidential election. She came to national prominence through her participation in televised debates ahead of referendums on same-sex marriage referendum, abortion, and the definition of family.
Steen, an avowed Catholic, has until Sept. 24 to obtain the support of 20 members of the Oireachtas, Ireland’s bicameral legislature, which would give her a place on the ballot paper.
Asked whether he thought the package might be connected with the presidential election, Quinn said it was a matter of speculation.
“Maria is obviously not running as an Iona candidate and there is no formal membership, so she’s not a member of it either. But she has gone out as a spokesperson for us in various debates, and she’s always very impactful when she does go out,” he said.
“Now that she’s out trying to get a nomination, it’s always said ‘Maria Steen and the Iona Institute.’ So that would have raised our profile.”
But Quinn pointed out that Steen was not mentioned in the anonymous letter. He also noted that O’Brien wrote a Sept. 14 column for the Irish Times, which argued that the triumph of left-liberalism over Catholicism had failed to lead to the flourishing of Irish society.
“That could have got up somebody’s nose. It could have been something like that,” he said.
In a Sept. 18 column, John McGuirk, the editor of Irish news outlet Gript, accused politicians of indifference to the anthrax scare.
“The sender of that letter wanted David to think, for even just a few seconds, that he was breathing in a poison that would kill him, make a widow of his wife, and make their children orphans,” wrote McGuirk, who knows Quinn personally.
Irish media report that the number of threats against public figures has increased in recent weeks. Police are investigating multiple threats against the home and family of Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Simon Harris.
Quinn said the anthrax incident would not affect his work at the Iona Institute, although he would be “a bit more careful not opening certain kinds of packages” in the future.