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But the dismissal appears to be an unforced error in a political year when Republicans cannot afford mistakes. The controversy exposed long-simmering tensions between Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians over who should be lawmakers’ religious counselor. And a public clash between Southern evangelical Republicans and Northern Catholics could play to the advantage of Democrats, who are pressing hard to bring working-class Catholic regions in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin back into the Democratic fold.

The controversy was heightened when Representative Mark Walker, Republican of North Carolina and a Baptist minister, said Thursday in an interview with The Hill newspaper that he hoped the next chaplain of the House might come from a nondenominational church tradition who could relate to members with wives and children.

Catholic Democrats quickly called his remarks anti-Catholic, as Catholic priests are celibate, and Mr. Walker’s spokesman later said Mr. Walker was not excluding a particular faith group. One Republican, Representative Peter T. King of New York, took issue with the comments.

“To be excluding one religion up front, that has all sorts of connotations coming from the evangelical community,” Mr. King said in an interview. He said he had received several inquiries from priests about Mr. Ryan’s decision, and he told the speaker, “This issue is not going to go away that quickly.”

A House Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said Mr. Ryan gave the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, an additional reason for Father Conroy’s ouster: Mr. Ryan said he was upset that the chaplain had granted an interview to The National Journal.

In the interview, Father Conroy expounded on matters like sexual harassment and a possible spiritual crisis in Congress. He said he was asked during his job interview whether he had ever molested a child. And while he said he had never been asked to counsel a victim of sexual harassment or assault, he had handled cases of workplace abuse during his tenure in the House.

“Think about it: Who are the people that run for office?” he was quoted as saying. “Are they all highly skilled in every endeavor? No! They’re not. Many of them, I can tell you, don’t know how to say hello in the hallway, let alone work with office people that maybe they don’t think they have to listen to.”

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Ms. Pelosi issued a statement arguing that Mr. Ryan did not have the authority to dismiss the chaplain. “I have expressed my forceful disagreement with this decision to the speaker,” she said. “It is truly sad that he made this decision, and it is especially bewildering that he did so only a matter of months before the end of his term.”

The outrage broke down largely along party lines. Of 148 members of Congress who signed a letter to Mr. Ryan demanding answers on why he ousted Father Conroy, just one, Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, was a Republican.

“This will have ramifications,” Mr. Jones said Friday afternoon. “This is bigger than Father Conroy and the House of Representatives. This is about religion in America.”

The controversy was multifaceted, pitting evangelicals against Catholics but also resurfacing lingering anger over this Congress’s singular accomplishment, the 10-year, $1.5 trillion overhaul of the tax code.

To supporters of that legislation, especially to one of its chief architects, Mr. Ryan, the prayer issued by Father Conroy would have stung: “May all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle,” the priest said in the midst of the debate. “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

Father Conroy, who was named to the post in 2011 by another Catholic Republican speaker, John A. Boehner, said that he did not regard his November prayer as political in nature.

“If you are a hospital chaplain, you are going to pray about health,” he said. “If you are a chaplain of Congress, you are going to pray about what Congress is doing.”

He said Mr. Ryan’s remarks to him afterward marked the only time anyone from the speaker’s office had chastised him for veering into the political realm.

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“I’ve never been talked to about being political in seven years,” he said.

In an election that ultimately will revolve around President Trump, the controversy may well prove ephemeral.

“Whatever Democrats try to do, if they try to politicize this or capitalize on this, I just think it is way too obscure,” said Douglas Heye, a longtime Republican political strategist and a Catholic. “If you are having a larger conversation about ‘Catholic issues,’ Trump is going to dominate that.”

Ten years ago on Capitol Hill, the number of Catholic Democrats in the House was more than double the number of Catholic Republicans. Now it is nearly even.

Some on the left see an emerging issue for Mr. Ryan and his supporters. “Partisans will likely frame this as a Catholic versus evangelical contest,” said Christopher J. Hale, a strategist who did Catholic outreach for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. “They made a political football out of a good Catholic priest.”

The spat is particularly pointed because religious power in Washington has shifted drastically under Mr. Trump to white evangelical leaders. Unlike Mr. Obama, who relied regularly on a religiously diverse group of interfaith advisers, including prominent Catholics, Mr. Trump has elevated a select group of conservative evangelicals who routinely defend his political agenda, and it is rare to see a Catholic bishop in the White House.

Mr. Trump himself famously feuded with Pope Francis during his 2016 presidential campaign over Mr. Trump’s push to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, which Francis called “not Christian.” Last year, some of Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisers sought to quiet Vatican criticism of the rightward direction of American Catholicism.

Before Francis became pope, the Vatican seemed to favor Republican mainstay issues, such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Francis’ rise helped reset the role of Catholicism in American public life, and prioritized political and economic messages on immigration and climate change.

The pope, like Father Conroy, is a Jesuit, an order of priests viewed by some as more liberal. Father Conroy’s resignation is all the more contentious in Catholic circles because Mr. Ryan is a Catholic conservative.

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“We are a long way from Pope Francis at the White House and in the Capitol,” said John Carr, the director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. “The divisions are greater, they are more stark and they are more angry.”

On Friday, the Catholic Association, a more conservative group, came to Mr. Ryan’s defense. Maureen Ferguson, a senior policy adviser with the organization, called criticism surrounding his decision to ask Father Conroy to step down “downright absurd.”

“Anyone who knows Speaker Ryan knows he is a devoted Catholic,” she said. “Much ado is being made about nothing.”

For others, it far more serious. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and an editor at large of America magazine, said he has heard from Catholics who are “dismayed” that a chaplain would be fired for apparently defending the poor, and he worries about the anti-Catholic dog-whistling.

“The implication that, as one legislator said, a ‘family man’ would be more suitable smacks of anti-Catholicism,” Father Martin said. “By that yardstick, Jesus wouldn’t qualify either.”

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GEDmatch said in a statement that law enforcement never approached it about the case in California.

“It has always been GEDmatch’s policy to inform users that the database could be used for other uses, as set forth in the site policy,” the website said, adding that participants’ information could help in the “identification of relatives that have committed crimes or were victims of crimes.”

Paul Holes, a recently retired cold-case detective with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, described the process of narrowing down suspects using DNA.

“When you find somebody that has DNA that they might share with our offender … then you find somebody else. And if you see that they share a little more DNA, you’ve stepped a bit closer to who the offender is,” Holes told NBC News. “And so you end up marching down that path until, ultimately, you get within a reasonably small suspect pool.”

The pool in this case included DeAngelo, who was the right age and lived in the area where many of the crimes took place, officials said. Investigators kept tabs on him for six days, collecting actual DNA on items he had thrown out, before arresting him Tuesday night at his home.

And DNA potentially may have played an earlier role in the case: by stopping the crime spree. Genetic testing was just coming into use as a criminal investigative tool in 1986 when the Golden State Killer apparently ended his decadelong wave of attacks.

DeAngelo, who was a police officer for two departments in the 1970s, most likely would have known about the new method, experts said.

After Sacramento County prosecutors confirmed Thursday that they found DeAngelo through genealogical websites, Ancestry.com and 23andMe issued statements denying that they had played any role.

Still, privacy laws aren’t strong enough to stop other police departments from prying, said Steve Mercer, the chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.

“People who submit DNA for ancestors’ testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” said Mercer, adding that they “have fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated data banks.”

Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University professor who studies ethics in science and medicine, said almost half of the firms that provide ancestry information will sell customers’ genetic information to some other company. Those might include pharmaceutical or drug developers that want it for research.

Earlier this year, Krimsky said in an interview with Tufts Now, a news site affiliated with Tufts University, that only 10 percent of the ancestry companies will destroy a person’s original sample.

“The vast majority hold onto your sample or sell it. So it’s not just the data, but your actual saliva, that’s being shopped around,” he added.

Friday’s summit between the leaders of North and South Korea was a “historic meeting” paving the way for the start of a new era, North Korea’s media say.

The North’s Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in of South Korea agreed to work to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons.

The official KCNA news agency hailed this as a “new milestone” in the path to joint prosperity. It also carried the full text of the declaration.

China and the United States both welcomed the news.

However, US President Donald Trump said he would continue to exert maximum pressure on North Korea, as he prepares to meet Mr Kim in the coming weeks.

“We’re not going to be played, OK?” he said.

“We’re going to hopefully make a deal.”

After the talks at the border, Mr Kim and Mr Moon also agreed to push towards turning the armistice, which ended the Korean War in 1953, into a peace treaty this year.

The summit came just months after warlike rhetoric from North Korea.

• Historic summit as it happened
• Five key moments from the meeting
• Read the Korean declaration in full

What is in the agreement?

Details of how denuclearisation would be achieved were not made clear, and many analysts remain sceptical about the North’s apparent enthusiasm for engagement.

An issue for the North is the security guarantee extended by the US, a nuclear power, to South Korea and Japan and its military presence in both countries.

• Will historic Koreas summit lead to peace?

Previous inter-Korean agreements have included similar pledges but were later abandoned after the North resorted to nuclear and missile tests and the South elected more conservative presidents.

Mr Kim said the two leaders had agreed to work to prevent a repeat of the region’s “unfortunate history” in which progress had “fizzled out”.

“There may be backlash, hardship and frustration,” he said, adding: “A victory cannot be achieved without pain.”

Other points the leaders agreed on in a joint statement were:

• An end to “hostile activities” between the two nations
• Changing the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that divides the country into a “peace zone” by ceasing propaganda broadcasts
• An arms reduction in the region pending the easing of military tension
• To push for four-way talks involving the US and China
• Organising a reunion of families left divided by the war
• Connecting and modernising railways and roads across the border
• Further joint participation in sporting events, including this year’s Asian Games

The commitment to denuclearisation does not explicitly refer to North Korea halting its nuclear activities but rather to the aim of “a nuclear-free Korean peninsula”.

• Why has Kim halted nuclear tests now?
• Profile: Kim Jong-un
• North Korea crisis in 300 words

What did China and the US say?

China later praised the political determination and courage of both leaders and said it hoped the momentum could be maintained.

President Trump also welcomed the news, tweeting that “good things are happening”.

Speaking in Washington, Mr Trump said his expected meeting with Mr Kim would take place in one of two countries under consideration and vowed he would not be “played” by the North Korean leader.

“We will come up with a solution and if we don’t we’ll leave the room,” he said.

How did Friday’s summit unfold?

The leaders were met by an honour guard in traditional costume on the South Korean side. The pair walked to the Peace House in Panmunjom, a military compound in the DMZ.

Mr Kim then invited the South Korean president to step briefly across the demarcation line into North Korea, before the pair stepped back into South Korea – all the while holding hands.

It was an apparently unscripted moment during a highly choreographed sequence of events.

The two leaders spoke together during a session broadcast live on South Korean TV.

Mr Kim jokingly apologised to Mr Moon for repeatedly forcing him to get up early because of the North’s missile and nuclear tests.

“I heard you [President Moon] had your early morning sleep disturbed many times to attend National Security Council meetings,” he said. “I will make sure that your morning sleep won’t be disturbed.”

“Now I can sleep in peace,” Mr Moon replied.

Mr Kim also acknowledged that the North’s infrastructure lagged behind that of the South.

“I’m worried that our transport situation is bad so it may discomfort you, it may be embarrassing [for me] if you visit North Korea after living in the South’s environment,” he said.

• Korea summit sparks cold noodle craze
• Diplomacy on the menu: How food can shape politics

After separating for lunch, the two leaders took part in a tree-planting ceremony using soil and water from both countries.

They later attended a banquet.

Mr Kim was accompanied for the symbolic discussions by nine officials, including his powerful sister, Kim Yo-jong.

• Kim’s sister and North Korea’s secret weapon

How did we get here?

Few had predicted a development like this, as North Korea continued its nuclear and missile tests and stepped up its rhetoric through 2016 and 2017.

The rapprochement began in January when Mr Kim suggested he was “open to dialogue” with South Korea.

• Did the Winter Olympics repair relations?
• North and South set up hotline ahead of summit

The following month the two countries marched under one flag at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, held in the South.

Mr Kim announced last week that he was suspending nuclear tests.

Chinese researchers have indicated that North Korea’s nuclear test site may be unusable after a rock collapse.