On Thursday, Fox News posted an article about a legal battle between the federal government and Saint Francis Health System, the 12th-largest hospital in the U.S. It seems that the hospital chapel is a candle that represents the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

The article reports:

A religious liberty nonprofit is threatening the federal government with a legal battle after a Catholic hospital in Oklahoma was offered the choice of either extinguishing a sacred candle in its chapel or being stripped of its federal funding.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the law firm Yetter Coleman LLP fired off a letter to officials with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week after the Joint Commission demanded earlier this year that Saint Francis Health System snuff out a candle that represents the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

The Joint Commission is an independent accrediting organization whose findings are often used to meet conditions for Medicaid and Medicare certification with the HHS-affiliated Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

…The letter maintained that the law requires flames be “placed in a substantial candle holder and supervised at all times they are lighted.”

The hospital entreated the agency in vain four times for a waiver regarding the candle, according to the Becket Fund, which noted that similar flames in the building such as pilot lights and those in gas stove heaters did not prove to be a problem.

“The government’s demand is absurd and unlawful — it is targeting Saint Francis’s sincere beliefs without any good reason,” Becket vice president and senior counsel Lori Windham said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. “The government has a simple choice: either stop this attack on Saint Francis’s faith or expect a legal firestorm.”

In their May 2 letter to the Biden administration, the Becket Fund urged the government to back off the sacred candle, which is encased in glass, covered with brass and located near sprinklers far away from medical equipment. The letter warned the ultimatum violates federal law and threatens to “cripple the operations of the premiere hospitals in the State of Oklahoma, simply because they keep a candle in hospital chapels.”

Note that the candle is in the chapel, away from medical equipment, encased in glass, and located near sprinklers. There are much more important things for the federal government to spend its time on.