The president of a Black Lives Matter chapter in Calgary has been charged with committing an anti-Catholic hate crime.
Adora Nwofor allegedly impeded access to a Catholic school on May 26 out of “bias, prejudice, or hate based on race or ethnic origin.” She was originally charged with mischief on June 2 for “willfully obstructing and interfering” with St. Thomas Aquinas School.
The 47-year-old appeared in court via video link and was released. She has been banned from having contact with the staff or faculty and is prohibited from going within 100 meters of the school, reports the Vancouver Sun.
Nwofor is known as a pro-abortion activist who led a demonstration at Olympic Plaza in May 2022 after a copy of the United Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. About 200 people attended at the event, where Nwofor expressed concern that the ruling could influence abortion regulations in Canada.
“Very often the decisions that are made in the States impact Canadians,” said Nwofor at the event, per the Calgary Herald. “They are planning to keep pushing their pro-life point of view.”
“It’s always nice to have support and people standing in solidarity, but the numbers that we’re seeing aren’t enough,” she said. “This is not a hundreds or thousands of people issue. It’s a hundreds of thousands if not millions of people issue.”
Nwofor is also a stand-up comedian.
“It makes sense because when I do stand-up and comedy, it’s social commentary. When I’m doing activism, I’m doing direct social commentary. And sometimes I use jokes because that helps people hear me; that makes [an] impact,” Nwofor told CityNews in 2021.
In 2020, she was asked to comment on the acronym BLM being spray painted on a permanently rainbow sidewalk in Calgary. Nwofor suggested the vandalism was meant to spark tension between her organization and the city’s LGBTQ community.
“That is a dedicated space to Pride Calgary and I don’t know if somebody asked them, so to me, it seems vandals went out and added some graffiti for their voice,” she told reporters, per Global News.
“I feel like it was done to divide Pride and BLM and we are not divided. We are accomplices,” Nwofor added. “I think people who are walking by are going to think we are collided but it’s a tactic of propaganda and oppression to make it seem like black people and queer people don’t get along, [but] we do we love each other.”
Hate crimes against Catholics are on the rise in Canada, up 260% in 2021.
“The increase is almost 10 times higher than for all hate crimes combined and was by far the single largest percentage growth recorded in any category,” reported the Catholic Register.
Catholic leaders have called on the Canadian media to cover the crimes in more detail to bring attention to the growing problem.
