Leonardi, a Democrat living in Tempe, Arizona, who is not Catholic, quickly realized the paper was fake, a partisan conservative publication with content critical of local Democratic candidates.The Arizona Catholic Tribune’s Facebook page identifies its owner as Franklin Archer, which is part of a multi-state network of partisan online and print publications posing as local media outlets, according to Priyanjana Bengani, a senior research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.She noted that print editions of another publication that is part of the network, the Grand Canyon Times, have been “showing up in Arizona for a couple of months now.”The Arizona Catholic Tribune that landed in mailboxes this week features a front page story asserting that Democrat Arizona Representatives Tom O’Halleran and Greg Stanton voted to “keep school ‘gender services’ secret from parents,” as well as a teaser claiming that Arizona public school teachers are being encouraged to promote a “child sexualization” reading genre.A spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix said in an email that the church is “in no way affiliated or supportive of the ‘Arizona Catholic Tribune’ publication.”“The Catholic organization and ministries in the Diocese of Phoenix do not engage in partisan politics and do not endorse candidates or parties during any election,” said Brett Meister, the diocese spokesperson.“The format of the media, the implied endorsement, all of these things, it seems like they are meant to signal an authoritative source.”Paul Bentz, a Republican pollster who lives in Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix, said he found a copy of the Arizona Catholic Tribune in his mail Monday."