A new wave of vandalism of churches in France shows what church leaders have long been trying to make clear to a less than receptive mainstream media: Christianity is under attack. These are not simple acts of vandalism, but deliberately anti-Christian gestures. In fact, in recent years there have been hundreds of attacks on churches, robberies, desecrations and even church buildings set on fire.
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As reported by the Spanish news site Religion en Libertad, in just one week three churches near, Paris, have been desecrated, not to mention the serious attack on the Saint-Denis basilica in which a man, before being arrested, hit several statues and a shrine with a metal bar. The French periodical Famille Chretienne states that, in the night between January 9 and 10, two churches were the scene of robberies and desecrations. These are two buildings of worship belonging to the diocese of Saint-Denis. Nearby, on the night of January 6, the church of Saint-Germain in Vitry-sur-Seine (in the diocese of Créteil, in Val de Marne) was also desecrated.
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On January 13, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the establishment of a fund of four million euros to equip sacred buildings with video surveillance systems, precisely because of the new wave of attacks: “As Minister, my task is to protect” these places. So let’s increase the means to equip especially places of worship with video protection.”
Between January and October 2021, some 1,380 anti-religious acts (insults, vandalism, desecrations) were recorded in France, a figure down 17% from the previous year, says the French Ministry of the Interior Among these, 686 acts were directed against Christianime targets, where in 2019 there were 921, a decrease was 25%. The decrease is partly comforting, but sacrilegious acts in the once strongly Catholic France remain many, too many, and confirm a disturbing trend for the entire world that was once respected Christian culture.