The Rev. Robert Altier delivered a fiery sermon earlier this month, labeling COVID-19 an evil, man-made conspiracy and telling his Catholic congregation in Crystal (Minnesota) that “we’ve been lied to.”
That came just days after the Rev. James Altman, a priest in La Crosse, Wis., appeared in a video posted on YouTube, calling Catholic Democrats “Godless” hypocrites doomed to hell — a video, produced by a Minnesota conservative media news outlet, that now has received 655,000 clicks.
“It is a man-made virus,” Altier told his congregation. “Work had begun in a laboratory in North Carolina and they shipped it to China to finish the work. And it was released, so that people would get sick. All this is being done on purpose.”
“You cannot be Catholic and be Democrat. Period,” Altman says. “Their party platform is against everything the Catholic church teaches. … Repent of your support of that party and that platform, or face the fires of hell.”
The 20-minute homily ends with Altier proclaiming the only way he would take a COVID vaccine is if “they arrest me, and hold me down, and force it upon me.”