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.
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.
The facade of the church of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Valence was tagged with anarchist slogans in black spray paint and covered with red paint. It is the second such incident over the weekend in Valence.
The facade of Notre-Dame church in Valence was splashed with red paint and tagged with anarchist graffiti some time between Saturday, March 12th and Sunday, the 13th. The priest discovered the damage before Mass on Sunday.
In the afternoon of March 11th, a small container holding the consecrated host was stolen from the Franciscan Monastery in Jaén.
The 13th century chapel of Saint-Ambroise of Busserotte-et-Montenaille, in Grancey-le-Château, was found completely ransacked.
At 2:15 in the afternoon of March 9, 2016, three men entered the rectory of the Catholic parish in Laakirchen of the Linz diocese and, armed with a handgun, demanded cash from the priest and a member of his staff.
The parish of San Andrés de Palomar was sprayed with the words "Fuego sálvanos de la Iglesia" (Fire: save us from the Church) accompanied by an anarchist symbol.
The words (translated from Slovenian) "Church get out of my womb" and "RCC (Roman Catholic Church) get out of our vaginas" were sprayed on the wall of the Franciscan church.
The youth organization Arran has taken responsibility for a graffiti attack against a church in the Catalonia region. The wall outside the church was painted lilac and the words "Contra los ataques de la Iglesia. Juntos somos más fuertes" ("Against the attacks of the the Church. Together we are stronger.")
In the night between March 7-8, the Freien Theologischen Hochschule (FTH) building in Gießen was hit with paint bombs. An anonymous claim of responsibility was published on a left-wing internet platform
During the night from March 5-6, unknown perpetrators sprayed the monument to Pope Benedict in front of the St. Oswald church in Traunstein with pink paint. Police are investigating.
Muslim refugees at the regional office complained about having to sit in the waiting room with "impure Christians". Security staff responded by banning the Christians for six months.
Stefan Geib, president of the district court in Saarbrücken, announced the removal of crosses from meeting rooms. They are to be replaced by the state seal.
A peaceful manifestation by 4,500 supporters of Demo für Alle against a proposed education program was disrupted by counter-demonstrators, resulting in clashes with police and 18 people injured, including 3 police.
On February 28th, Slobodan Djoric, the priest of the Church of the Dormitition of the Most Holy Mother of God in Pejčići, reported to the police that the 17th century church had been the victim of theft and vandalism.
The church of Saint-Martin of Dommartin-le-Coq was the victim of a burglary sometime between the 23rd and 27th of February.
A Sheffield University social work postgraduate student, Felix Ngole, was expelled from his course for posting on his Facebook page that homosexual activity is against the teaching of the Bible.
In advance of a planned peaceful demonstration on February 28 in Stuttgart by Christian activists against a new school curriculum emphasizing gender ideology, the radical left group "Antifa" attacked the building owned by a financier of the buses provided for the demonstration.
During the night between February 23-24, burglars entered the church of Saint-Augustin in the Guadeloupe town of Saint-Claude and destroyed the tabernacle, opened the ciborium and removed the consecrated Hosts, and stole the entire sound system.
Seven small religious shrines, little boxes topped by a cross and containing statuettes of saints, have been desecrated for years.
Julien Sanchez, mayor of Beauclaire, was denounced by the League of Human Rights on February 17th for having displayed a creche at the city hall at Christmas time.
A Paris court acquitted members of the radical feminist group Femen who had in November 2012 disrupted Catholic families peacefully protesting in defense of traditional marriage, topless with vulgar anti-church slogans written on their bodies and spraying fire extinguishers at the group.
Six Iranian Christian refugees were told by a security employee of the Tempelhof accommodation that they had an hour to leave because they were trouble-makers. Just days earlier, these six men had been threatened with beatings by 70 radical Muslim refugees for reading the Bible.
The chapel of Saint-Pierre, originally dating from the 5th century and which is being restored, was vandalized. Portions of the posts of the portico holding the roof were sawn with chainsaws. Motives are unclear, as there was no wood taken. The mayor is outraged and the police are investigating.