Churches attacked on French island amid rising ‘Christianophobia’

Grace Mortimer. August 20, 2024, Catholic Herald.

From Israel to India to Egypt, attacks against churches and other symbols of Christianity in the East have become so frequent that they are now, in the words of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, “common”.

In recent years, however, a new phenomenon has emerged: the desecration of Western churches in Europe and North America, a trend that some have labelled “Christianophobia”.

A report earlier this year by the Family Research Council outlined the alarming rise in acts of arson and vandalism against churches in the USA in 2023; there were 436 such acts, double the number logged in 2022.

It constituted a nationwide assault, encompassing 48 States, with only Hawaii and Wyoming spared.

California reported the largest number of attacks, 33, a clue perhaps to the perpetrators of the profanity; the Golden State is the cradle of radical Progressivism, an enemy of the Church which in its turn embodies the principles of “faith, family and flag” that are so viscerally abhorrent to the liberal Left.

Canada has also experienced a wave of anti-Catholicism since the claim in 2021 that mass graves of indigenous children had been found at Marieval Indian Residential School, part of the Canadian Indian residential school system in Marieval, Saskatchewan.

No such graves were ever discovered but the controversy that accompanied the claim – and which has still not been officially disavowed by the media and government that leapt on it – has unleashed a violent outpouring of hate against Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, which in most cases was responsible for running residential schools.

In the last two years, 96 churches have been burned, vandalised and destroyed in Canada. The culprits are believed to be a mix of far-left extremists and wayward youths from Native reservations.

One of the first churches to be burned to the ground, in July 2021, was St Gregory’s Church in British Columbia. Native American Chief Clarence Louie, of the Osoyoos Indian Band, condemned the attack and said: “I don’t think white people came here and burned this down.”

This speaks to the point that it was razed, quite probably, because it was to some a symbol of colonisation, which is the suspected motive behind the latest wave of arson attacks on churches that has occurred on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Four churches have been set alight this summer in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. Violence erupted in May this year when the indigenous Kanaks launched a push for independence.

The most recent arson attack occurred on 14 August, when a series of fires were started in a church in the town of Poindimé, destroying the sacristy, altar, chapel and furniture.

The attacks have been condemned by the Kanaks’ independence movement. Over 52 per cent of New Caledonia’s 270,000 population are baptised, including many Kanaks, who are also regular church goers.

Significantly, though, the island’s Protestant places of worship have not been targeted. Protestants from the London Missionary Society were the first to arrive on New Caledonia in the middle of the 19th century, followed by the Catholic Marist Brothers.

Since the 1970s, New Caledonia’s main Protestant Church, which has a membership of nearly 40,000 Kanaks, has been in favour of independence; the Catholic Church has always remained neutral.

There is also a belief among some that the arsonists burning Catholic churches in New Caledonia are doing so with the encouragement of outside influences, notably Azerbaijan, which has made no secret of its strategy to undermine French influence in the region after the Paris government supported Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan.

But as disturbing as the attacks are to the French public reading about it back in France, they are well accustomed to acts of anti-Catholicism.

Such acts have been increasing for a number of years, from 857 in 2021 to 1,000 last year across France.

What right-wing French politicians call “Christianophobia” has become the most prevalent religious bigotry in France this century, though there has also been a surge in anti-Semitism since Hamas massacred more than 1,000 Israelis last October.

Attacks against Muslims and Islamic places of worship, in contrast, are the least common among acts characterised as anti-religious in France.

Islamophobia may make headlines in the western mainstream media, but it’s “Christianophobia” that is on the rise.