Each week sees the disappearance of a Christian religious building in France due to demolition, arson or remodeling. Two-thirds of the fires in Christian religious buildings are caused by arson. Acts of violence against Christians have increased tenfold between 2008 and 2019, the V4NA news agency reported in an earlier piece.
As reported by The European Conservative news site, 60 percent of the attacks can be attributed to far-left and satanist groups, with the remaining 40 percent committed by radical Islamists.
Smoldering religious heritage
Edouard de Lamaze, head of the Observatory for Religious Heritage, recently pointed out that urban and rural landscapes are undergoing a permanent transformation because while Christian churches are vanishing, the number of mosques appears to be proliferating.
On April 15, 2019, the whole world was shocked to see the Paris Notre-Dame go up in flames, and nearly a year later on July 18, the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul in Nantes was ablaze. In the 15 months between the two disasters, more than twenty church buildings caught fire in France.
The causes of the fire in the Paris cathedral are still unknown. In Nantes, however, there is strong suspicion that the fire was caused by a criminal act, as was the case with the fire at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris on March 17, 2019, a month before the fire at Notre-Dame.
The land of blazing cathedrals
The spectacle of the destruction at Notre-Dame in Paris on April 15, 2019 shocked not only Parisians and the French, but the whole world. One of the greatest symbols of Christianity was severely damaged: its top had fallen and its roof had collapsed. The tragedy occurred during the Holy Week preceding Easter, the greatest Christian feast. It was a great stroke of luck that the Gothic cathedral was saved from total destruction, as also reported by Magyar Nemzet.
And after the Notre-Dame fire, a church in the Bouches-du-Rhone department in southern France went up in flames on Easter Sunday.
The fire started in a chapel and destroyed the presbytery and damaged the wooden parts of the building, which dates back to the 18th century. It was shortly afterwards that the fire broke out inside the Nantes Cathedral in western France.
The Nantes Cathedral is famous for its beautifully built 400-year-old organ. The flames came from the direction of the instrument, through the central window of the main facade. The organ and several stained glass windows were destroyed.
Later, a fire broke out in the Catholic church of St Peter and St Paul in Lille in eastern France, where foul play could not be ruled out, France3 local television reported in 2021.
In 2018 alone, L’Observatoire de la Christianophobie (Christianophobia Observatory) counted 26 fires or attempted fires that occurred inside or near churches in France, the Liberation reported.
In 2021, more than 800 anti-Christian incidents were reported in France. A 2019 survey found that 48 per cent of the French population identified as Catholic, four per cent as Muslim, and one per cent as Jewish, with 34 per cent describing themselves as having no religion. But other studies suggest the percentage of Muslims is higher, the Catholic Herald reported. According to an official count published in February and processed by CheckNews, the interior ministry recorded "1,063 anti-Christian acts" in 2018. At the end of March, Le Figaro published a report from the gendarmerie that reported 877 cases of damage and vandalism. In 2018, there were 129 thefts at Catholic places of worship.
Unfortunately, Catholic churches have become increasingly frequent targets of vandalism. The Paris-based L'Observatoire de la Christianophobie tracks anti-Christian acts. France’s interior ministry recorded 996 anti-Christian acts in 2019 - an average of 2.7 per day.
Growing Christian-hatred across France
A map by L'Observatoire de la Christianophobie circulated on social media illustrates the increase in Christianophobia in France since 2010.
Between April 2019 and July 2024, the US-based Snopes fact-checking website repeatedly checked this map, which documents all the incidents - such as vandalism, theft, arson, or other violence - that have been directed against Christian churches, cemeteries and buildings.
It should also be noted that while this map does document some relatively serious crimes, such as arson or the toppling of church statues, many of these pins correspond to graffiti-related incidents, the fact-checkers wrote.
The map below is a non-exhaustive collection by Magyar Nemzet of churches in France that have burned down or have been set on fire in recent years.
"A good church is a burning church"
Besides fires, churches are the targets of numerous other atrocities and attacks against Christian symbols are also on the rise in France.
A banner five meters long and one meter high was placed on the Saint-Volusien abbey church under renovation in Foix, Ariege, which read: "A good church is a burning church".
In March 2022, vandals targeted the Romilly sur Seine church in Aube. A plaster statue of Our Lady was found smashed to pieces on the floor and the church's documents were set on fire.
Satanist and anarchist tags were discovered on the church of St Nicholas in Nantes, as well as a swastika and various symbols on the church of Saint-Ondras in the north of Isere and on the walls of the college of Abrets in Dauphine in March 2022. Unknown perpetrators daubed satanic inscriptions in black paint on the facade of the cathedral of Coutances in Manche department.
Also in the spring of 2022, the tabernacle was found forced open in the church of Courcoury near Saintes. A valuable wafer container was also taken for "satanic purposes", according to the parish priest. Reunion media interviewed gravediggers who look after the eastern cemetery in Saint-Denis. They reported horrific acts of desacration and satanic or woodoo rituals.
In February, a man threw insults in Arabic and spat at a priest at the Saint Michel church in Bordeaux. It later emerged that the French court had sanctioned this man, previously convicted but on the run for several years, for this act only by ordering him to attend a citizenship course. In Fontainebleau, a man who vandalized 67 graves in a Catholic cemetery was sentenced to mere three months, suspended. On January 25, 2022, a 48-year-old man was arrested for looking for the priest in the Holy Trinity Basilica in Blois with a Quran and a long knife in hand.
According to the French authorities, this is not a crime and does not qualify as terrorism.
At the beginning of 2022, a man grabbed the sacred vessel during communion in the Saint-Esprit church in Paris, smashed it and threw it on the floor. The act of desecration sparked a huge outcry.
The powers of evil are being unleashed, it is a test of the church's trust in God and a reminder that Christ defeated the devil,
the parish priest said later.
In December 2021, around 30 priests and the participants in a procession were attacked by hooded youths in Nanterre.
The attackers called them infidels, shouting "this is Allah's country" or "I will slit your throats, I swear on the Quran".
Nothing is sacred anymore
Hailed by French "Gothic" critics, Swedish satanist artist Anna von Hausswolff performed at the end of 2021, the day before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at Notre-Dame de Bon Port in Nantes. The woman, who respects nothing and no one, later called the protesters "homophobes, royalist, far-right anarchists" on social media.
In the summer of 2021, human excrement was found on several occasions in the church of Vire in Calvados department.
"This is clearly the repeated manifestation of deliberate malice," said Francois Lecrux, the parish priest.
The above examples are far from exhaustive. Acts of violence against Christianity are on the rise. The website of L'Observatoire de la Christianophobie contains 81 pages of attacks on Christian church facilities, fires, thefts and violent assaults against Christian priests in France.
