Anonymous just messed with the Pope. The official website of the Vatican was down for most of the day Wednesday and a statement posted on the text-sharing website Pastebin attributed the incident to an attack by self-identified Italian members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
The statement rattled off virtually every major scandal and morally dubious enterprise that members of the Catholic Church have been involved in throughout its history, from book burning to forced evangelism to ties to the Nazi regime to more recent child sex-abuse scandals. The statement further claimed Anonymous was acting out in protest.
“This is NOT intended to attack the true Christian religion and the faithful around the world, but to the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church and all its emanations,” the statement read.
As of the time of this posting, the Vatican website was back online. A Vatican spokesperson confirmed the temporary downing of the website to Reuters but didn’t verify that it was due to a cyber attack.
