The religious crèche of the Saint-André church in Mont-Saint-Aignan, near Rouen, was vandalized on January 11, with the decorations overturned and the figures broken. The statue of the baby Jesus was decapitated. After expressing his sadness to the parish and to the parish priest, Monsignor Dominique Lebrun, Archbishop of Rouen, deplored the incident as an "offense against the Christian faith."
Monsignor Lebrun said in a press release, "Every year, thousands of anti-religious acts are recorded. Desecrated cemeteries, tagged religious buildings and evil intrusions are worrying signs. Respect for religious convictions and their symbols is constitutive of the dignity of the human person, proclaims the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Doesn't wanting to erase faith and its signs from the public arena lead one to think of them as enemies of society? Is education for secularism failing?"