A Catholic priest in Spain who was going through jail time for making remarks essential of radical Islam has been acquitted.
Father Custodio Ballester was accused of violating Spain’s hate regulation after he answered a query posed in 2016 about an interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims.
“I thank God and the Christian individuals who supported me with their prayers and their presence in court docket,” Ballester instructed Fox Information Digital in an announcement earlier this week.
Ballester, fellow priest Fr Jesús Calvo, and journalist Armando Robles have been arrested and charged underneath the nation’s hate-speech regulation and confronted a number of years in jail.
Abogados Cristianos, a faith-based advocacy group, introduced the court docket’s determination, stating that the court docket discovered “there isn’t a hate crime.”
ÚLTIMA HORA La Audiencia de Málaga absuelve al padre Custodio, perseguido por criticar el islam: no hay delito de odio. pic.twitter.com/aPMEloL7sV
— Abogados Cristianosﻦ (@AbogadosCrist) October 17, 2025
Based on Europa Press, “the Málaga court docket dominated that the target and/or subjective parts required for the hate-speech offence are missing. Within the phrases of the court docket: ‘Irrespective of how despicable or perverse the message could also be, or even when the statements could also be clearly offensive or unlucky,’ they don’t in themselves represent a punishable offence.”
As CBN Information reported, Ballester mentioned in a letter written in 2016 that there might be no interfaith dialouge between Christian and Muslims.
“Islam doesn’t permit for dialogue. You both imagine or you’re an infidel who should be subdued a method or one other,” he wrote on the time.
He expanded on his remarks in a 2017 YouTube video warning that Islam not solely poses a risk in Europe, but additionally that in lots of Muslim-majority international locations, Christians face persecution.
The Affiliation of Spanish Muslims In opposition to Islamophobia, responding to Ballester’s public remarks, filed a grievance that prompted expenses in opposition to the priest.
Ballester instructed the Catholic Information Company previous to his court docket look that his phrases weren’t hate speech or discriminatory, and the end result would decide “the survival of freedom of expression in at this time’s Spain.”
“In any other case, we’ll be headed towards a brand new Cuban dictatorship. One the place you have been arrested for what you mentioned in addition to for what you thought, if it differed from what Fidel Castro determined,” he defined.
Organizations and a whole bunch of Ballester’s supporters referred to as for his acquittal, saying the ruling was a politically motivated assault on Christianity.
Abogados Cristianos circulated a petition urging the hate crime prosecutor, Miguel Angel Aguilar, to drop the fees. It garnered greater than 29,000 signatures.
Ballester mentioned lately that prosecutors are unlikely to drop the case. He claims they’re outraged concerning the court docket’s determination and can probably attraction.
“My sentence has enormously angered the prosecutor’s workplace as a result of it halts all proceedings in opposition to freedom of expression,” Ballester mentioned. “They will attraction to the upper courts. The heads of the hate prosecutor’s workplace: Miguel Ángel Aguilar and his deputies, Jesús Raimundo and Elena Pertusa, don’t like defeat. We’ll proceed to battle for freedom.”
***Please join CBN Newsletters to make sure you obtain the newest information from a distinctly Christian perspective.***
