Record 3,000 Christian Sites Vandalized in Europe 2019
Acute rise in Anti-Christian attacks on churches, schools, cemeteries, and monuments
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Throughout 2019, a record number of attacks on Christian sites across Europe suffered vandalism, looting, or damage, according to reports.
The sites, which included churches, schools, cemeteries, and monuments compiled of a range of attacks such as arson, defecation, desecration, looting, mockery, Satanism, theft, urination, and vandalism.
Ellen Fantini, the director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, told Breitbart News:
“Sadly, 2019 was punctuated by increasing incidents of desecration and vandalism of churches around Europe, along with the 2019 fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which captured worldwide attention.'
“In most instances the perpetrators of these acts were unidentified, but the Observatory has documented that churches and other symbols of Christianity in Europe are targets for many groups — from Islamists to radical feminists, LGBT activists to anarchists and self-proclaimed Satanists,” Ms. Fantini added.
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The attacks made its record year for anti-Christian sacrilege.
But the majority of attacks on Christian sites have occurred in France, which saw churches, schools, cemeteries, and monuments “being vandalized and burned - averaging on three per day,” according to reports citing government statistics.
Meanwhile, Germany saw attacks against Christian churches averaging on two per day.
Additionally, attacks on Christian churches and symbols also occurred in Belgium, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, and Spain.
In June last year, three churches located in the East end of London in the UK suffered arson attacks in the space of two days, with each door being marked with satanic pentagrams and the number 666.
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St John’s Church in Stratford was the first to be subjected to the attack where vandals set fire to the main door.
In France and Germany, the acute rise in Anti-Christian attacks coincided with the recent mass immigration, which is predominately Muslim.
Still, the lack of official statistics makes it hard to know how many were a result of Islamic anti-Christian hostility.
“European governments and politicians, with a few exceptions, seem reluctant to address this problem,” Ms. Fantini said.
Fantini agreed with former UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt that “the UK and other Western governments have not grappled with the issue perhaps because of misguided political correctness or an instinctive reluctance to talk about religion.”
Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon said:
We are “witnessing the convergence of laicism – conceived as secularism, which relegates the faithful only to the private sphere and where every religious denomination is banal or stigmatized – with the overwhelming emergence of Islam, which attacks the infidels and those who reject the Koran.
“On one hand, we are mocked by the media that discredit the action of the Church, in particular regarding sexual abuse, and on the other, there is the strengthening of Islamic fundamentalism.
These are two joint realities,” he said.
