Dr. Anthony Fauci is receiving some criticism after an interview with BBC special correspondent Kathy Kay, where he stated he no longer believes he has to attend services and that his “personal ethics” are enough. The exchange occurred during the interview when the chapel where Fauci and his wife were married was pointed out. “You don’t practice anymore, do you? Why?” asked Kay. Fauci stated his reasons were “complicated.” When pressed further, he stated, “First of all, I think my own personal ethics on life are, I think, enough to keep me going on the right path.” He added, “I think that there are enough negative aspects about the organizational church — that you’re very well aware of.” Despite his comments, he insisted he is not against Catholicism and still identifies as Catholic. “I was raised, I was baptized, I was confirmed, I was married in the church, my children were baptized in the church — but as far as practicing it, it seems almost like a pro forma thing that I don’t really need to do.”

The interview spurred on a number of Dr. Fauci’s detractors, with one user by the name Newman Nahas writing an imaginary exchange, where Fauci answers, “First of all, becoming a messiah figure for a competing religion made it kind of AWKWARD.  Plus, as the literal incarnation of The Science, I just thought it would be a bad look.” The response seems to refer to a statement in 2021 when Fauci criticized his GOP detractors. “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science. All of the things I have spoken about, consistently, from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people,” he said. Fauci has continued to face scrutiny for his recommendations made during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, including his push to shut down churches and initially denying the effectiveness of masks before then supporting mask mandates. Many red states have since made moves to ban localities from making mask mandates.

The Blaze’s Steve Deace, who has been an open critic of Fauci’s since the pandemic, called his statements demonic. “This is confirmation of all the demonic language I’ve used discussing this fiend the last few years,” he posted to X. “This is straight up Satanic levels of ‘ye be like God’ and ‘I will be like the Most High’ stuff. Fauci is openly and literally proclaiming he is his own god here.” Others on Deace’s feed agreed, with one of his followers commenting, “That Paul Kingsnorth quote comes to mind. ‘If you don’t worship something beyond the world, you’ll worship the world. And the strongest thing on it.’ Nobody is stronger than Fauci. He took over the world and was paid billions. He could do it again without consequences.”