July 2023 was a soul-searching month for the FBI’s field office in Richmond, Virginia. The office’s analysts didn’t like the way the Washington headquarters treated them and would eventually need therapeutic counseling, a new Justice Department report says.
Earlier that year, the field office produced a confidential intelligence product now known as the “Richmond Catholic Memo.” It linked the area’s nontraditional, 49-year-old Our Lady of Fatima Chapel with a global network of anti-Vatican priests, the Society of St. PiusX (SSPX).
The memo suggested the alliance presented an extremist threat here at home. The field office even assigned operators to surveil two priests…