By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief
PARIS/VIENNA/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Church leaders are raising alarm as thefts, arson, and vandalism against Christian sites surge across Europe, with France at the center of a disturbing trend. Violence against Christians has also increased across the continent, Worthy News learned.
French authorities reported a 30 percent increase in arson attacks on churches in 2024, nearly 50 incidents in a single year.
Thefts from church properties also climbed, with 780 cases recorded, including chalices, statues, and parish collection funds, officials said.
At Paris’s Notre-Dame d’Auteuil Church, the parish priest, Antoine Devienne, recalled an attempt to steal a crown dedicated to the Biblical Mary: “Well, we took it away because we didn’t want to tempt bad intentions.”
He added that the parish has since installed video surveillance and now double-locks doors after Mass.
The surge in France reflects a broader pattern, according to investigators.
HATE CRIMES
The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) documented 2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes in 2023 across 35 countries.
Nearly 1,000 of those occurred in France, about 700 in Britain, and more than 270 in Germany.
Germany’s cases more than doubled, rising from 135 in 2022 to 277 in 2023, according to the Vienna-based observatory, which estimated at least 2,000 cases of property damage against Christian sites in Germany alone.
The crimes went far beyond vandalism. In Spain, a Catholic altar server was murdered in Algeciras by an Islamist extremist — an incident highlighted in OIDAC’s 2024 report. In Britain, a convert to Christianity from Islam narrowly survived an attempted murder, another case cited by the watchdog. And in Poland, a religious procession was deliberately targeted in a car-ramming attack, OIDAC noted.
DIFFERENT MOTIVES
In the Spanish town of Albuñol, a 21-year-old Moroccan migrant was detained after smashing a stained-glass window and attempting arson at the Church of Santiago Apóstol, according to the report.
OIDAC said motives behind anti-Christian hate crimes vary widely, citing anti-religious sentiment, far-left and far-right extremism, and radical Islamist ideology.
Its executive director, Anja Hoffmann, warned earlier this year that Christians across Europe are increasingly self-censoring and feel unsafe expressing their faith publicly.
“The space for Christians in Europe is shrinking,” she stressed, urging the European Union to consider appointing a coordinator to combat anti-Christian hatred, similar to existing roles on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has linked anti-Christian sentiments at least in part to massive migration from mainly Muslim nations, warning that Europe’s Judeo-Christian roots are threatened.
Christian leaders stress that the rise in thefts, arson, and hate crimes not only endangers centuries-old places of worship but also undermines the security of Europe’s Christian communities.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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