Hackers from an Italian cell of the group ‘Anonymous’ took the Vatican’s website offline. At writing, vatican.va is still offline, though Vatican officials are working to fix this. Anonymous claims to seek to punish “the corrupt Roman Catholic Church and all of its emanations.”

Anonymous’ Italian website states that “today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic concepts that your for-profit organisation spreads around the world.” Anonymous also denounced Catholic stances on abortion and contraception and called attention to its sex-abuse scandal, and accused the Vatican of being “retrograde” in “daily” interference in Italian domestic affairs. The wealth of the Catholic church was also mentioned, as well as the pointing out that it is a “for-profit” organization. Anonymous also made it clear that it was just attacking the Catholic Church as a business, and “is not against the Christian religion or the faithful around the world but against the corrupt Roman Apostolic Church.”

Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, was not sure how long the site would be down.

Anonymous had recently declared war on organized religion in general, has also been in the news after some of their affiliates were arrested after being ratted out by one of their own, the hacker Sabu.