No members of the Supreme Court attended this year's annual Red Mass in Washington D.C. after an insane man was caught with a huge stash of explosives outside the church.
41-year-old Louis Geri of Vineland, New Jersey, was found in possession of more than 200 homemade bombs in a tent outside St. Matthew's Cathedral on Sunday, the Washington Post reported.
After a tense standoff, police took Geri into custody and found a large arsenal of explosives, some of which contained the same chemicals used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
The maniac handed police a notebook with the title, "Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives."
In it, Geri expressed hatred toward Catholics, the Supreme Court, Jews, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
According to court documents, Geri made threats as police ordered him to leave the premises, where he had set up a tent.
"Do you want me to throw one out, I'll test one out on the streets? I have 100-plus of them," Geri told a police sergeant, according to court records.
"If you just step back, I'll take out that tree. No one will get hurt, there will just be a hole where that tree used to be."
During the encounter, a police sergeant agreed to read some pages from Geri's notebook, but the situation escalated when Geri started pulling out vials of yellow liquid with illegal explosive devices taped to them.
Eventually, police were able to arrest Geri after he left his tent to urinate on some trees.
The authorities found that some of the vials contained nitromethane, an explosive compound often used in improvised explosive devices, including the ones deployed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, the Post reported.
The Red Mass is held each year to invoke God's blessing on the Supreme Court and others involved in the administration of justice. The celebration occurs on the Sunday before the first Monday of October, as the Supreme Court begins its term.
A majority of the court's justices, six out of nine, are Catholic. While it is typical for some justices to attend the Red Mass, none were present this year due to the security threat, according to reports.
The situation is being treated like a hate crime, with Geri facing eight charges in all, including manufacture or possession of a weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a hate crime. A judge ordered Geri held without bond.
