Donald Ossewaarde was arrested on August 14th as he conducted a bible study group in his home. He is first foreign missionary to be charged with violating Russia's law banning missionary activity outside officially registered church buildings.
During the night of August 13, 2016, unknown persons forced open the door of the church of San Bartolomeo in the Como province and attempted to break open the tabernacle containing consecrated Hosts, broke the marble lectern, and topped the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, breaking her hands and nose.
After 88 years of closure, the Panagia Sumela Monastery in Trabzon, was reopened in June 2010 and since then, the Turkish authorities had given a license for a yearly Mass to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to celebrate the Mass of the Assumption. This year, the authorization was administratively revoked.
The Callosa de Segura town council voted to remove the cross in the plaza of the church of San Martin. Christian legal groups objected, noting that its presence poses no threat to anyone and that it is part of the town's historical and cultural heritage.
The Catholic Church of Karlstad has been a repeated victim of attacks: Hate graffiti, inverted crosses glued on its walls, and broken windows. In 2015, Father Martin Ferenc, pastor of the church, filed no fewer than 15 police complaints. The police suggested that he install video surveillance cameras in order to identify the perpetrators. The priest therefore asked the administrative board to authorize their installation. The board rejected the application on the grounds that the church's interest in solving these crimes is outweighed by the individual's interest in not being recorded.
A "street artist" tagged a fresco in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Vicenza with black spray paint.
During a press conference with Bundestag member Erika Steinbach, Pastor Mahin Mousapour said Christians staying at migrant shelters are being told that they are impure and that they deserve to die for rejecting Islam.
The attack occurred at 3.10 a.m. when unidentified assailants, presumed to be anarchists, threw four Molotov cocktails into the yard of a church in central Athens, the Moni Petraki, which houses the central offices of the Church of Greece's Holy Synod. The molotov cocktails detonated, destroying two cars that had been parked outside.
Four women wearing headscarves entered the Church of San Zulian, approached the crucifix, and spat on it. They then moved among the tourists undetected. The day before, on July 6, 2016, two young men, described as "Asians," received Communion, and then spat out pieces of the Host onto the ground and fled.
During the day of August 6, 2016, a 14-year-old intentionally set a fire in the church of San Filippo Neri in Savigliano using candles. The fire spread to the wooden paneling and was finally contained by the use of two fire extinguishers.
Fourteen young Christian Iranians fled their accommodations after being threatened with death for months by a group of Muslims living in the tent city.
The posters read: "The only church that illuminates is one that burns" along with an illustration of a church on fire.
A group of about 25 people burst into the church of Saint Gregory Palamas in Thessaloniki, disrupting the Divine Liturgy (Eucharistic service of the Byzantine Rite) throwing leaflets protesting against the expulsion of refugees and migrants. The protesters clashed with those present in the church. Riot police made more than twenty arrests.
An unknown perpetrator climbed the clock tower of the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Saulcy-sur-Meurthe and twisted the metal hands of the clock, rendering it inoperable.
In the wake of the murder of a French priest, the Belgian publication NordPress posted the following (in French): "Pope Francis announced today at the World Youth Day that all priests who die a martyr, like the 84-year-old abbot killed by extremists in his church, will receive 72 altar boys in paradise. A new dogmatic measure for the Catholic Church which aims to compete with the 72 virgins offered to Muslim martyrs."
Italy expelled two Moroccan men who caused disturbances in Catholic churches as part of a wider effort to reduce terrorism threats. The two expelled were a 25-year-old man who smashed a 300-year-old wooden crucifix to the ground inside a Venice church in early July and a 69-year-old man who stormed into a church in 2015 in Trentino and shouted abusive statements about Catholicism.
The cross and the base of a monument were broken with a sledgehammer and chisel. The opening of the monument was scheduled for three days later. Police investigated.
Father Jacques Hamel, 84, died after his throat was slit during an attack on the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray by two armed men.
Unknown perpetrators broke into the church of Saint-Pierre of Jupilles and ripped the central electronic control panel of the bells from the wall. The box was found on the altar. The Mayor said "It is the symbol of the sacred is affected. There is a will to harm."
The newly-constructed chapel of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X was vandalized with anti-Catholic, anarchist slogans.
British pro-life doctors and nurses face hostility, loss of advancement, and pressure to perform or refer for abortions despite legislation guaranteeing their right to conscientiously object, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
The mountaintop statue of the Virgin Mary of la fontaine du lac de Ninu holding the infant Jesus was vandalized, with the heads and arms cut off both figures.
"Hart van Homo's" (Heart for Gays), a Christian charity that encourages celibacy for gay Christians, lost governmental funding after the ruling party argued that it sent the wrong message.
Four young men broke into the church of Saint-Pierre and overturned benches, broke vases, and emptied a fire extinguisher. They urinated and defecated in the holy water on the altar and on the altar itself.
Gordon Larmour, a Christian evangelist, was charged with behaving in a "threatening or abusive manner aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation" and "assault", after he referred to the Book of Genesis and stated that God created Adam and Eve to produce children in response to a 19-year-old's question about God's views on homosexuality. He spent one night in prison. Six months later, a court in Kilmarnock, Scotland acquitted him of all charges.
Two churches in cities in eastern Turkey infamous as the sites of historic killings of Christians were vandalized during the attempted coup on 15 July, 2016.
The church of Saint-Pierre des Chartreux was vandalized: The tabernacle door was torn off and part of the book collection of the prayers of the faithful was burned. Other objects were overturned. A police report was filed.
An order of nuns was ordered to pay 25,000 Euros to a teacher for discontinuing her employment based on the incompatibility of her sexual orientation with the Catholic school’s ethos.
A fire was set in the cemetery of Caucade in Nice West, where three tombs were blackened. One hour later, a fire was discovered in the church of Saint-Marc and a door was damaged.
No casualties were reported, but the damage was considerable: the roof collapsed and the building was destroyed. The cause of the fire is being investigated and arson has not been ruled out.
The young man of North African origin rushed into the church of St. Jeremiah, in Cannaregio, Venice and threw a large crucifix to the floor, heavily damaging the religious artifact.
Cardinal Marx, chair of German Bishops' Conference and Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, head of the Protestant Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), united to condemn the attacks on Christians and other religious minorities in camps.
A 42-year old man confessed to setting at least fifteen fires including one that damaged the Abbey Saint-Austremoine in Issoire on July 3. The blaze, which destroyed a confessional, a table and some chairs, was quickly extinguished. The fire caused great upset among the population. The suspect was indicted for "intentional damage by dangerous means to people."
The churches of La Motte, Lauren, Loudéac, and Lachèze in the region of Côtes-d'Armor were painted with the word "Pédophile."
The country's religious education classes in French-speaking primary and secondary schools will be cut in half in October 2016 and replaced with a weekly hour of citizenship classes, over the objection of students and teachers.
The new law bans preaching, praying, proselytizing, and disseminating religious materials outside of officially-designated sites, and authorizes fines for these activities conducted in private residences or distributed through mass print, broadcast or online media.
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.