I found an upstream bug report which describes a very similar issue: https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4379 And pango is considered a suspect by claws-development there. I like to clarify: I observe the problem sporadically (an article every some days) on Leap 15.2 (which does not have a bleeding edge pango) and also in Tumbleweed, but with different articles. But if an article triggers the problem on a system (e.g. Leap 15.2) then every time after killing and restarting claws-mail selecting the article again will make claws-mail "freeze" again consuming 100% CPU. So it is reproducible "per system" but not "across systems".