Burned, damaged & vandalised churches across Europe in 2019

Europe has seen an increase in the burning and vandalising of churches this year, particularly in France and in Germany but also in Scotland, England, Poland, Spain, Italy and Austria.

According to the German news site PI-News, every day in France, two churches are desecrated each day in France. In 2018, they report, there were 1,063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols like crucifixes, icons, and statues in France – a 17 per cent increase from the previous year.

According to Crux Now, the towns of Rheinfelden-Nollingen (robbed twice), Schworstadt, and Bad Sackingen in Germany have seen thefts in several Catholic churches from mid-April to early May.

In early May, the wall of the Herz-Jesu Catholic church in Winnweiler was defaced with graffiti; the Evangelical Lutheran City Church in Rudolstadt was vandalised with paint and a paving stone was thrown through the window of a chapel in Morbach-Hoxel.

A church in Wilhelmshaven had nine windows smashed, a church was set on fire in Nienborg, and members of churches in Stuttgart and Frankfurt that were planning on commemorating the Armenian genocide received terror threats, causing the events to be cancelled.

On July 29, the Katholische Kirche St. Magnus in Bad Schussenried was lit on fire burning a cloth, pictures and a wooden cross. A witness noticed the fire and was able to extinguish it.

On July 30, an unidentified person pried open the offertory box for candles in the Kirche St. Pankratius (St. Pancratius Catholic Church) in Körbecke, Möhnesee.

In February, four churches were vandalized in France in just one week. Cardinal Robert Sarah stated in his Twitter account that month that “the acts of desecration and vandalism in churches are always highly reprehensible. They are the sad reflection of a sick civilization that gets carried away in the nets of evil. Bishops, priests, the faithful must keep strength and courage.”

On Feb. 4, a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was smashed to bits in the Église Saint-Nicolas de Houilles (St. Nicholas Church) in the town of Houilles. Weeks earlier, the altar cross had been thrown to the ground and the celebrant’s chair damaged.

On Feb. 9 shortly after its opening, the Église Notre-Dame in Dijon saw the tabernacle and the hosts scattered on the altar, a tablecloth rolled into a corner and a vase broken.

The diocese tweeted that there was a feeling of “sadness” and that a Mass of Reparations would be presided by the Archbishop that Saturday.

On Feb. 5, vandals desecrated and crushed crosses and statues in the Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in southern France, and shattered the arms of a statue of a crucified Christ in a mocking way – twisted to look like the famous gesture of the footballer Paul Pogba. In addition, crosses and statues of saints were smashed and the altar cloth was burned – all discovered by the secretary of the parish who went to shut the cathedral.

On Feb. 6, in the southern city of Nimes, near the Spanish border, vandals looted the altar of the Église Notre-Dame des Enfants (Church of Our Lady of the Children) and smeared a cross with human excrement. They also broke into the tabernacle and scattered altar hosts on the ground.

On April 15, the UNESCO World Heritage Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire in Paris, although it is believed to have been an accident. Parts of the cathedral were under scaffolding as part of renovations and 16 copper statues had been removed the previous week. Around 500 firefighters battled the flames of the 850-year-old building to prevent its towers from collapsing.

On July 8, a man in his thirties was arrested after he entered the Sées Cathedral with several cans of gasoline.

In Scotland, anti-Catholic graffiti (“F*** the Pope”) was found on April 27 spray-painted on a bus shelter outside Holy Family Catholic Church in Mossend. On April 29, vandals entered St. Simon Catholic Church in Glasgow– the main place of worship for the city’s Polish community – and broke a statue, overturned candles and a shrine to Our Lady of Częstochowa.

Spain has also seen several churches vandalised this year, most notably in March when feminists vandalised the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the finish line of the famous pilgrimage ‘el camino’ pilgrimage. One graffiti read ‘we will shout until we are without a VOX’ referring to the political right wing party VOX, which means ‘voice’ in Latin. Another graffiti read ‘Yo no salí de tu costilla, tú saliste de mi c***’ (I did not come out of your rib, you came out of my p****).

On July 26, a Catalan 18-year-old from the Spanish city of Sabadell was caught on camera defecating inside the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Fuensanta de Villanueva (Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Holy Fountain) in the town of Villanueva del Arzobispo in southern Spain.

In Italy, the Chiesa di Sant’Antonio di Crebbio (Church of Sant’Antonio in Crebbio) in the northern town of Abbadia Lariana was vandalised on Aug. 1 at, according to witnesses, around 4am. The perpetrators smeared excrement on the front door, staircase, and on the cobblestones outside the church, leaving a yellow bowl with some dung residue.

These are just some of the attacks of which most are being documented by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe .