The dumbest story of the week is unfolding on X (Twitter) & I accidentally became part of it. Some people checking if voter registrations are accurate in Pennsylvania, flagged a monastery of nuns as having 53 people at the same address was suspicious. This resulted in now harassing nuns for being living together as is normal for those in a religious community.
They sent someone up (at least they claim to as some dispute this) & this person went to the guest house or something like that and the 1 person there said nobody lived there. The person replying likely meant just the guesthouse or similar, but the visitor interpreted it as the whole property. They posted this on X as a case of voter fraud.
I saw this & did some basic checks on Google Maps & their website to see that it really was a group of sisters, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie. (I seriously disagree with these sisters on some points, but people should not harass nuns.)
I posted yesterday, pointing out that this seemed legitimate in hopes they would not harass nuns.
It kept going with him insisting it was fraud.
This morning a reporter called them to confirm it was real.
The nuns also issued a statement saying they were really living there & indicating they were looking at a possible defamation lawsuit.
“We want to call Cliff Maloney to account for his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud. We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie. We also want to alert those who subscribe to X and other social media platforms to be vigilant and seek additional information before accepting these posts as truth,” said Sister Stephanie Schmidt, prioress. […]
We are also pursuing legal counsel regarding this public defamation.
Thus concludes the dumbest story of the week. They harassed nuns for being nuns. (I posted this on Facebook first, but I am posting it here so it does not get lost in my feed.)
