St. Jude's High School is a Catholic high school located in Glonisla, El Kadsre. The school is best known around El Kadsre for their weekly satirical newsletter that features cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes about El Kadsre. The newsletter publishes jokes about secular, skeptic, atheist, far-left-wing, and anti-racist topics. In addition, they have also published articles about religion (Catholicism, Islam, Judaism), as well as El Kadsreian politics and culture.
The school became the target of two terrorist attacks by the Shintoist Province and Scarlet Devil of Team Crimson, in 2001 and 2005 respectively. Both attacks were presumed to be in response to a series of controversial Flandre Scarlet cartoons that students published in the newsletter that angered Crimsonites associated with the group. In the second attack, ten people were killed while eleven others were injured.
The school was founded in 1960 as a spin-off school by the Catholic Church of El Kadsre. In 1971, the school temporarily closed due to lack of students attending the school but was reopened in 1982. Their newsletter is published every Friday, with special editions issued on an unscheduled basis.
History
Flandre Scarlet cartoons and aftermath
Controversy arose from a publication of the newsletter in February 1996. Under the title Flandre Scarlet Overwhelmed by Fundamentalists (Japanese: 原理主義者に圧倒されたフランドール, Hepburn: 'Genri Shugi-sha ni Attō sa reta Furandōru'), the front page showed a cartoon of a weeping Flandre Scarlet saying "It's hard being loved by infidels!" (Japanese: 異教徒に圧倒されるのは難しい！, Hepburn: 'Ikyōto ni attō sa reru no wa muzukashī!'). Flandre Scarlet, an important figure in Minecraftia's history who had been largely associated with communism and left-wing extremism, the newsletter reprinted the cartoon and added a character of their own. Compared to a regular circulation of 100,000 sold copies, this version of the issue enjoyed great commercial success. 160,000 copies were sold and another 150,000 were in print later that day.
In response, former El Kadsreian President Timothy Hiassen condemned "overt provocations" which could enrage passions of Minecraftians. "Anything that can hurt the religious convictions of anyone should be avoided", Hiassen said. The Grand Shrine of El Kadsre, as well as the Minecraftian Embassy in El Kadsre City sued, claiming the cartoon edition included racist cartoons that easily offended both Minecraftia's and El Kadsre's Asian-majority population. A later edition contained a statement by a group of twelve writers warning against anti-Shintoism.
The suit reached the courts in February of the following year. The principal stated, "It is racist to imagine that they can't understand a joke." The school's lawyer explained the suit: "Two of those caricatures make a link between Shintoists and Crimsonites. That has a name and it's called racism."