(LifeSiteNews) – An Irish journalist believes an anti-Catholic motive lay behind an anthrax scare this week.

Police and bomb disposal experts sealed off the Dublin headquarters of the Iona Institute on September 16 after David Quinn opened a package containing white powder and a note saying “Happy Anthrax Mr David Quinn (and) Bitch O’Brein.”

Quinn, a columnist for the Sunday Independent and the Irish Catholic, said that this was a reference to Irish Times columnist Breda O’Brien, a patron of the institute.

Police alerted the army’s explosive ordnance team, who secured the building before declaring the scene safe. The substance has not yet been identified, though authorities said it was unlikely to be anthrax.

Quinn told The Pillar he would be “amazed” if the incident was not motivated by hostility toward the Catholic faith. “It named both me and Breda O’Brien, who tends to write from a pro-Catholic perspective like me,” he said.

Quinn said the Institute, which he founded in 2006 and promotes Christianity’s social and moral values, has long received threatening or abusive messages, particularly during high-profile debates on abortion, marriage, and the Church’s handling of abuse scandals.

While death threats were “occasional,” he said, none had been credible. The latest incident, he added, was the most serious in nearly two decades of such hostility.

“This has been going on since before social media,” Quinn said. “Social media simply magnified things that were already there. This, I guess, is the worst incident.”

The package arrived as Maria Steen, a barrister associated with the Institute, is campaigning for a place on Ireland’s presidential ballot. Steen, a Catholic commentator who has spoken in national referendums on moral issues, must secure 20 endorsements from lawmakers by September 24. Quinn said there was no evidence linking the incident to her campaign, though her candidacy has raised the Institute’s public profile.

O’Brien, meanwhile, published a column days earlier arguing that Ireland’s cultural liberalization had not delivered the promised renewal. Quinn suggested the letter may have been linked to her commentary, though he stressed that was speculation.

In a September 18 column, Gript editor John McGuirk criticized political silence on the scare, arguing that the package was meant to terrify Quinn into thinking “he was breathing in a poison that would kill him.”

This comes in a climate of growing threats and violence against Catholics, including the August school shooting during Mass at the Annunciation Church Minneapolis, USA.

Irish police say they are also investigating threats against other public figures, including Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris. Quinn said the episode would not deter his work but admitted he would be “more careful opening certain kinds of packages.”