The church of Santa Elena was the victim of desecration, theft, and vandalism on July 3rd. The parish priest discovered the tabernacle completely emptied, smashed and detached from the wall. A statue of the Virgin Mary was decapitated, and a ciborium full of consecrated Hosts was stolen, along with an ancient reliquary containing a fragment of the Holy Cross.
The statue, located on private property in Chadenac and surrounded by a wrought iron fence, was vandalized and its head was broken off.
Judges in Belgium fined a Catholic nursing home after it prevented doctors from giving a lethal injection to a 74-year-old lung cancer sufferer on its premises.
The president of Asturias Laica, Jose Luis Iglesias, has formally requested that the Mayor of Gijon, Carmen Moriyón, resign from office for assisting in the Catholic ritual of the blessing of the waters in the feast of San Pedro, the city’s patron saint, which was celebrated on June 29.
A man broke into St. Paul's Church in central Malmö and vandalized it, including breaking the stained glass windows. According to the police, it will be investigated as a hate crime as they suspect that the man attacked the church because it is a symbol of the Christian faith.
The statue, the civil and religious symbol of the city of Bologna, was defaced with "Allah Akbar" painted on the base. The Archdiocese of Bologna condemned the act and police are investigating.
Two young Afghan men severely attacked a woman from Iran because she converted from Islam to Christianity, according to police.
A York jury heard evidence about sustained bullying of a teenage apprentice, a Catholic, by tying him to a cross in a mock crucifixion, among other acts, during a trial. They found the accused guilty of assault, but not guilty of religiously aggravated assault.
Cardinal Antonio Cañizares was accused of hate speech by the Feminist Platform of Alicante, along with 55 other LGBT organizations. They alleged that his homily was "full of hatred, homophobic and sexist." On June 23, 2016 he was cleared of the charges.
A 24-year-old man was arrested after he entered the crypt of the shrine to the city patrons Cassius and Florentius and caused extensive damage to the crypt, tabernacle, and the sarcophagus in which the relics of the saints are held.
On July 2, Swiss police arrested a 51-year old suspected of intentionally setting fire to a confessional in the St. Gallon Cathedral.
A vandal sprayed satanic symbols, a large pentagram, and the number 666 onto the lawn of the graveyard at All Saints Church in Hull, Yorkshire.
German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung a published commentary on the Orlando shooting in which it said the crime had nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with “homophobia” and that the shooter could just as well have been an Evangelical Christian.
The Church of England has been accused of discriminating against a lesbian couple by refusing to conduct their wedding.
The cathedral Saint-Julien du Mans was spray painted with a dozen messages including "Ni dieu, ni maître", "Anti autorité", "belle porte", and "Le Mans zone pacifiée". Police caught the perpetrators in the act and took them into custody.
A Catholic church in Celje was defaced with satanic words and symbols, resulting in 3,000 euros in damage.
The statues of the Virgin of Candelabra and Santo Herman Pedro were beheaded by unknown vandals in a sanctuary in the mountain town of Cabo Blanco in Tenerife.
Security guards at refugee camps in Hamburg have reportedly told the Christian residents to keep their faith a secret, claiming they cannot protect them if their secret is revealed.
A Christian refugee family of four was attacked by Muslims in their shared refugee accommodations for not participating in Ramadan. The family members were taken to a hospital in Seligenstadt due to their injuries. The mother and two sons were attacked with chairs and one of the sons was struck in the arms with a sharp object. The father suffered from arrhythmia due to the attack. During the attack the radical Muslims stated "Let us kill the unbelieving Christians, punish!" ("Lasst uns die ungläubigen Christen abschlachten, bestrafen!"). Police were able to intervene and the Christian family has been moved to a different refugee accommodation.
In the early hours of Friday, June 10th to Saturday, June 11, two clearly intentional fires were discovered in two different churches in Narón. Each resulted in significant damage to the religious buildings. Incendiary devices were found in both churches. The fires were investigated by agents of the state security forces, as well as the local Narón police.
The Holy See’s Permanent Representative to UN offices in Vienna, Msgr. Janusz Urbanczyk, has urged the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe to pay greater attention to discrimination against Europe’s Christians.
The All Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief released a 35-page report in which it said the questions used to assess conversion asylum claims demonstrated a "lack of understanding and misperceptions of religion."
A Christian union has been banned from holding meetings on college premises, as a result of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy "Prevent".
A group of 30 thirty people, led by a self-proclaimed imam, attacked a Syrian Christian and his roommate at the Rottach-Egern refugee accommodation.
German police report that unknown perpetrators stole a small piece of fabric with a drop of the Pope's blood.
Christian refugees in various accommodation centers in Austria endured abuse at the hands of Muslim fellow refugees, including being forced to wake early in the morning to pray, being told they were impure, having belongings stolen, and instances of physical violence.
Katarzyna Jachimowicz, a Polish family physician working in Norway, became the first medical professional in the country fired because she exercised her conscience rights by refusing to administer abortifacients.
In Mont-Sainte-Geneviève, two fires significantly damaged an historic church. The first started in the sacristy. The fire fighters had just left the scene after managing to control that fire when another much bigger fire in the church roof was reported.
The case concerned the inability of Mersin and Izmir Jehovah's Witnesses in Turkey to obtain an appropriate place to engage in worship due to restrictive laws. The ECtHR held that such restrictions amounted to a direct interference with their freedom of religion.
In a press release Father Benoît Delabre reported that on May 15th the altar in the Church of St. Madeleine-de-l'Île was set on fire in Martigues, about 800 kilometers south of Paris. On the same day, another unknown person desecrated the tabernacle which contained the consecrated hosts in the church at Jonquières in the same region. Additionally, Father Delabre himself was attacked a week later by a man he caught at the church door who appeared to be “trying to steal something.”
Archbishop Anthony Fisher warned that religious liberty is at stake in Australia's national elections because of the Green's proposed $32 million "Safe Schools" Program which would charge parents, schools, and churches with discrimination if they fail to conform.
A 27-year old Muslim man was found guilty and given a life sentence for the murder of a 70-year-old woman in Bad Friedrichshall on May 19, 2016. After strangling the woman with a telephone cord, Abubaker C. left writing on the wall "It's payback time" and put a cross in the woman's hands. He then stole valuables and fled. The prosecution argued that the murderer's motive was both theft and to kill a "disbeliever".
In 2011, after initially agreeing to euthanasia for a 74-year-old cancer patient, a Catholic nursing home denied the physician access to the patient. The patient had to be taken home where she could receive the doctor.
An Assemblies of God church in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azurin was the victim of arson. Bibles and other books inside the church were stacked up and burnt, according to Pastor Alain Denizou.
Legislation puts an end to a program that helped churches keep track of their local memberships using data provided by the municipal administration.
According to the NGO "Christian Solidarity International" (CSI), Christian refugees are being repeatedly discriminated against in Austrian refugee centers.
In April 2016, members of the Green Party in Austria submitted a Parliamentary Question to evaluate possible actions to stop “pro-life” workshops in religious education.
Catholic School Notre-Dame de l’Abbaye in Nantes was vandalized twice in two weeks.
Twice in four weeks, an unknown perpetrator broke the arms off the Jesus figure displayed above hotels along a route frequently used by walkers and cyclists.
On April 16th, many Catholics discovered that their parish website’s home page was replaced with messages in English denouncing "terrorism against Muslims” in Burma by Buddhists, and in Palestine by "Zionists" or in Mali by the "French forces." The messages were set against a black background and topped with a Tunisian flag.
Piers Morgan will not face sanctions after asking a Christian who opposed same-sex marriage whether he was a "homophobe".
Pro-Abortion activists held a demonstration on April 10 in front of the Polish Embassy in Budapest to protest the tightening of Poland's abortion law.
In the region of Diyarbakir, the Turkish government seized huge sections of property, including six churches. One of these is a 1,700 year old Syriac Orthodox Church.
A Christian magistrate Richard Page has been removed from office by the Lord Chancellor after sharing his personal conviction in a media interview that there is not enough evidence to show that placing children in the care of same-sex couples is in their best interest.
L’église Saint-Pierre suffered deliberate damage during the afternoon of Easter Monday: five separate fires started inside the building while it was open to the public. The abbot has filed a complaint.
On March 22nd, several statues of St. Joseph, located in the chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Neiges and the church of Saint-Pothin, were destroyed by vandals.
ISIS took responsibility for three coordinated suicide bombings in Brussels: two at Zaventem Airport and one at Maalbeek metro station which killed 32 people from around the world and injured over 300. The Islamic State announced "By the grace of Allah and His gratitude alone, a security detachment from the soldiers of the Caliphate, may Allah dignify it and support it, launched to target Crusader Belgium..."
During the night of March 19, unknown perpetrators entered a small chapel in Obervockling, removed a statue of the Virgin Mary, and set a plastic flower vase, small altar cloths, and some branches on fire inside the chapel.
Firefighters responded quickly to extinguish the fire, which originated with burning furniture in the Cathédrale Saint-Louis during the afternoon of March 18th.
A small chapel dedicated to St. Léger was the victim of vandalism and attempted theft. Unknown perpetrators broke through the iron doors and dismantled the limestone slab floor, with the apparent intent to steal the materials.