Haut-Rhin Church & Creche Tagged; Infant Jesus Burned
The figure of the nearly life-size Christ child was burned in a crib display on December 31 at about 10 pm, while the faces of his parents and a wall of the adjacent Catholic church were tagged with spraypaint.
According to the mayor of Lapourtroie, a passerby noticed the wooden figure depicting Jesus was on fire and he managed to get him out of the crib so that the small fire did not have time to spread. Furthermore, the faces of Mary and Joseph were crudely covered with black paint. A wall of the adjacent church was sprayed in black paint with the messages: “Nique l’Eglise” (“Fuck the Church”) and “Antifa”, with the letter capital "A" surrounded by a circle, a traditional symbol of anarchism. After the intervention of firefighters to prevent resumption of fire in the creche, all damage was reported to the police who opened an investigation. Source: L’Alsace