CNA Staff, Nov 22, 2023 / 16:27 pm
A popular Catholic YouTube channel run by a religious community known as the “Home of the Mother” was removed by YouTube on Nov. 3 for allegedly violating the platform’s policies on spam, deceptive practices, and scams.
The channel titled “HM Television (English)” was best known for its hugely popular documentary “All or Nothing.”
The film tells the story of Sister Clare Crockett, a young Irish nun who gave up an acting career to enter religious life and was killed in an earthquake while serving in Ecuador in 2016. The documentary had millions of views before being removed along with the rest of the channel’s hundreds of videos.
Sister Kristen Gardner, a member of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother and author of a book about the life of Sister Clare Crockett, told CNA on Wednesday that the sisters were especially saddened by the documentary being removed. Despite the religious community appealing the decision, Gardner said that the channel “remains deleted.”
“The Sister Clare documentary was doing much good,” Gardner said, adding that it was “helping to bring many people back to the Catholic faith and also to pull people out of mediocrity in their living out the faith.”
The channel was run by the Home of the Mother community’s “EUK Mamie Foundation,” a multimedia Catholic apostolate centered in Spain, which also produced the documentary. According to Gardner, the apostolate is primarily directed toward young people, families, and children and arose from a desire “to contribute to the new evangelization.”
Gardner said that YouTube, which is owned by Google, didn’t give any notice or warnings of the channel violating its policies before removing it.
“On Nov. 3, we noticed that many of our embedded videos, including the film about Sister Clare Crockett, were displaying an error message,” she explained. “We tried to log into the YouTube channel where these videos were located … and surprisingly the channel was no longer to be found.”
She said they did not find the email notification from YouTube until after the channel had already been removed. The email was found in the sisters’ spam folder.
EUK Mamie immediately appealed the removal and got a quick response from YouTube.
According to a Nov. 10 EUK Mamie statement, YouTube said: “After carefully reviewing your channel, we have confirmed that it violates our policy on spam, deceptive practices, and scams.”
“We understand that this is not the best of news, but we must ensure that YouTube is a safe place for all users,” YouTube went on, adding, “We will not restore your YouTube channel.”
Home of the Mother denied that the channel’s content violated any YouTube policies.
The community said its channel “has not used its videos to deceive or defraud anyone” and that it is “not even monetized, because HM Television-EUK Mamie never had the intention of obtaining economic benefit but rather to evangelize, entrusting the future of the channel to God’s providence.”
The community has since created a new English-language YouTube channel titled “HM Television (International).” The new channel currently has only 286 subscribers. The community also reposted the documentary on its “Home of the Mother” channel. The video currently has 7,000 views.
Home of the Mother said it was “saddest” to lose the previously posted documentary “because of the many comments of people sharing their testimonies and stories.”
“Daily people sent testimonies, both written and oral, of the great spiritual good received through this documentary,” Home of the Mother said. “Conversions, young people who discover or accept their vocation to the consecrated life or to the priesthood, vocations ‘saved’ in a moment of crisis, graces received, and many lives changed by Sister Clare’s witness of conversion and dedication to God.”
“This video radiated too much light and the lord of darkness could not bear it,” the statement went on. “But perhaps we can get it back if we fight together in defense of religious freedom and freedom of conscience. Remember that apt saying of Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
“We ask for your help to spread this message and to publicize this denunciation in all the ways and means at your disposal. We also ask for the help of your prayers, so that the Lord may allow us to recover this tool at the service of evangelization.”
YouTube has not yet responded to CNA’s request for comment.
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