by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – An annual report by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) shows there were “2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes” across 35 European countries in 2023, Christianity Today (CT) reports.
Published in November, the OIDAC annual report shows that the most affected countries were France (1,000 incidents), the United Kingdom (over 700 incidents), and Germany (277 incidents), CT reports.
“These trends should alert us all to step up efforts to protect freedom of religion or belief, including the freedom to openly and respectfully discuss different philosophical and religious viewpoints on sensitive issues, without fear of reprisal and censorship,” Anja Hoffmann, executive director of OIDAC Europe, said in a press release.
Noting that hostility toward Christians in Europe does not generate the same kind of attention that the persecution of believers in other parts of the world does, Christof Sauer, senior consultant and former founding director for the International Institute for Religious Freedom, told CT: “It is particularly challenging to attract attention for discrimination against Christians in Europe, compared to the discrimination of minority groups such as Jews and Muslims.”
“Secularists might regard Christians in Europe as those in power, as ‘perpetrators’ of violence from a historical perspective, and might have a hard time acknowledging victimhood,” Sauer said. “There is an increasing degree of religious illiteracy in Europe, and understanding of the broad scope of religious freedom often is limited.”
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
A federal appeals court on Tuesday temporarily allowed the Trump administration to continue collecting its 10% global tariff, pausing a lower-court ruling that found the import duties unlawful for three plaintiffs who had won relief last week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a short-term administrative stay while it considers whether to keep the tariffs in place during the government’s appeal.
Saudi Arabia launched covert airstrikes inside Iran during the recent Middle East war, according to a Reuters exclusive citing two Western officials and two Iranian officials — a move that, if confirmed, would mark the first known Saudi military action carried out directly on Iranian soil. The reported strikes came in late March after the kingdom suffered Iranian attacks, including missile and drone strikes that exposed vulnerabilities in the U.S.-backed security umbrella protecting Gulf Arab states.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that Russia had successfully test-fired its new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile — nicknamed “Satan II” by NATO — declaring it the most powerful missile in the world and saying it would enter combat service by the end of 2026.
Hungary’s new government signaled Monday it will continue buying Russian energy despite European Union plans to phase out imports of Russian oil and natural gas, raising the prospect of an early confrontation with Brussels.
More than 100 new evangelical churches have reportedly opened and thousands of people have been baptized in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, church leaders say.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said an agreement between Iran and the United States may be the best path to ending Israeli military operations in Lebanon, while defiantly rejecting any outside demand that the Iranian-backed terrorist group disarm.
U.S. federal prosecutors announced criminal charges Tuesday against the operator of the cargo ship that struck and destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024, killing six construction workers.