This month France has been severely rattled by what some are calling Christianophobia that has swept over the country.
Newsdesk (16/05/2025 08:10, Gaudium Press) In the Brittany city of Rennes, the church of Saint Jean Marie Vianney was desecrated, and in Normandy the parish hall of a church was vandalized. A similar fate befell the parish hall of the Saint-Laurent church in Maurepas, south of Paris, while in the middle of the French capital a man carrying a knife entered Saint-Ambroise church just before Mass. Police were swiftly on the scene and no one was hurt in the incident.
In the south of France, a church in Saint-Aygulf was targeted on the night of May 4/5. The tabernacle was ripped off and the Eucharist removed. In a statement, Monseigneur François Touvet of the local diocese, said: “For Christians, this act is a sign of a desire to desecrate what is most dear to Catholic Christians.”
The most disturbing incident occurred last weekend at Avignon, 120 miles west of Saint-Aygulf, at the church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Repos. Shortly after Father Laurent Milan had conducted evening Mass, he was confronted by “around ten teenagers or young adults asking if they could enter the church”. They said they were Muslims who wanted to visit a church.
Father Milan welcomed the youths into the church whereupon the trouble started. One of several parishioners who witnessed the disorder told reporters that “one of them started running around, others gathered around the priest, shouting insults”.
The invective was against Jesus and the Catholic religion, and Father Milan was warned: “We’re going to come back and burn down your church.” The mob departed with a cry of “Allah akbar!”
The threat should not be taken lightly. Incidences of arson on Christian places of worship rose by 30 per cent in 2024, up from 38 incidences in 2023 to 50. Some of these occurred in the French Overseas Territory of New Caledonia in the Pacific, which experienced several weeks of civil unrest in the spring of 2024, but the majority were on mainland France.
In response to the confrontation in Avignon, the city’s archbishop, François Fonlupt, lamented the “lack of respect” and linked it to the “poverty” of the neighbourhood. Some have argued this is a disingenuous analysis, and that poverty should be no excuse for such behaviour.
The archbishop also warned against any “media hype” that might enflame tensions. He needn’t worry. The French media have a tendency to ignore the growing number of anti-Christian acts. Two priests were assaulted in separate incidents at Easter but neither received much coverage outside the conservative media.
An intelligence report revealed that in 2024, acts categorised as anti-Christian accounted for 31 per cent of religious-motivated violations in France.
This is one reason why the overwhelming majority of French people want their borders better controlled. Under Macron, legal and illegal immigration has reached unprecedented levels and most of the arrivals are from North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
A survey in 2021 found that 65 per cent of Muslim secondary school pupils in France attached more importance to Islamic law than to Republican law. This does not bode well for the future.
Political leaders like to sing the praises of “integration” but in France, as in Britain, a sizeable number of immigrants have no wish to integrate. In France the fear is that religious tension will increase in the coming years, and the appalling incidents of recent weeks will become commonplace.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Catholic Herald
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