Woman Pleads Guilty to Threatening to Bomb DC Catholic School for Printing Same-Sex Marriage News

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A California woman pleaded guilty to threatening to bomb a D.C. Catholic school after it announced it would include news of same-sex marriages in its alumnae magazine.

Two days after Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School announced it would print the announcements, a nun and administrator received threats about bombing the school and killing nuns.

Sonia Tabizada, 36, pleaded guilty in federal court to making the bomb threat.

The elite private girls' school owned and operated by the Roman Catholic Church announced on May 13, 2019, that it would begin including news of former students' same-sex unions in its alumnae magazine.

"We reached this decision as a school and Monastery leadership after much prayerful consideration and thoughtful dialogue," a letter to the community said.

Two days later, a nun and school leader who graduated from the school in 1948 received two threatening phone calls.

First, prosecutors say Tabizada left a message early the morning of May 15 saying, in part, that "sinners" have to "be separate," that the school should remove gay people from the magazine and that she would burn and bomb the church.

She called back a minute later, prosecutors said.

"I'm gonna f---king blow up the school and call it a mission from God," she allegedly said, in part.

Tabizada is not a graduate of the school, a school representative said.

Tabizada faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000 at sentencing scheduled for March 23.

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