A new report exposes a surge in anti-Christian violence across Europe, revealing deep cultural tensions and the limits of liberal tolerance.
Newsroom (22/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) Europe is witnessing a stark rise in hatred and violence against Christians, according to a new report that warns of an entrenched hostility towards the continent’s historic faith. The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, in collaboration with the European Centre for Law and Justice, has compiled one of the most comprehensive studies yet on this growing phenomenon.
Drawing on police data, independent research, and international sources, the report records 2,211 anti-Christian hate incidents in 2024, including 274 physical assaults. While that figure marks a slight decline from the previous year, the decrease appears to reflect changes in data collection, particularly in the United Kingdom and France. In reality, the number of violent physical attacks continues to climb.
A Faith Under Siege
The study defines this climate as Christianophobia—hostility, discrimination, or violence directed at individuals or institutions because of their Christian identity. The documented incidents include vandalism, assaults, arson, and legal penalties for believers who express traditional views in public. Across the continent, from France and Germany to Spain and Austria, sacred spaces have been burned, churches desecrated, and clergy attacked.
Nearly 100 arson attacks on churches were recorded last year, about a third occurring in Germany. Many of these crimes go unresolved; few lead to arrests or convictions. Some have proven deadly: priests and worshippers have been killed or gravely injured, the report notes, in acts often inspired by jihadist ideology or by militant secularist and far-left movements opposed to Christianity’s public presence.
Legal and Cultural Intolerance
Violence is only one side of the story. The report outlines a subtler form of pressure—an expanding legal and cultural intolerance that punishes open Christian expression. Examples include individuals fined or prosecuted for silently praying in public spaces or for articulating Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality. Faith-based institutions are also facing limits on their ability to operate according to their moral mission.
Compounding the problem, many Christians choose not to report such harassment. Fear of ridicule or institutional indifference discourages victims from contacting authorities. Surveys suggest that a majority of incidents never enter police statistics, obscuring the true extent of anti-Christian hostility.
Europe’s Institutional Blind Spot
At the political level, the report is sharply critical. The European Union maintains dedicated offices to combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred, yet there is no equivalent coordinator for anti-Christian hatred. Christians are often subsumed under generic anti-discrimination frameworks, a policy gap that the report argues reflects an institutional blind spot at the heart of European identity politics.
The disparity exposes a troubling double standard. Europe condemns religious persecution abroad, yet fails to address discrimination against its own majority faith. In official efforts to promote inclusion, Christianity often occupies an awkward space—acknowledged historically but marginalized in practice.
The Deeper Struggle
Beneath the statistics lies a profound cultural question: does modern Europe still understand what Christianity is—and why it matters? The hostility documented in the report points to a clash not only between believers and their attackers but between two visions of freedom. Christianity insists that truth is received, not invented, and that freedom is ordered toward the good. The modern secular state, born from Enlightenment ideals, tends to tolerate religion only insofar as it remains private and nonconfrontational.
From the French Revolution onward, the relationship between Christianity and European modernity has been fraught. The Revolution’s rallying cry of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité promised universal liberation but soon turned its suspicion toward the Church. To many Enlightenment heirs, Christianity represents a rival moral authority, challenging the state’s claim to define meaning and morality on its own terms.
Forgetting the Foundations
The report’s implications go beyond the violence. At stake is Europe’s relationship with its own identity. Its laws, universities, hospitals, and even its idea of human dignity were all shaped by Christian thought. To treat Christianity as an embarrassment, the report suggests, is to engage in an act of civilizational self-denial. A continent that forgets its moral inheritance risks losing confidence in its own purpose.
“Stat crux dum volvitur orbis”—“The Cross is steady while the world turns,” the Carthusian motto declares. That stillness, the report implies, is what unsettles a continent built on constant change. Christianity resists the absolutizing of any political creed or ideology. Its endurance stands as a quiet rebuke to modern Europe’s restless reinventions.
More Than a Warning
In the end, the Observatory’s latest findings should be read not only as a record of alarming incidents, but as a mirror held up to modern Europe. The continent cannot credibly preach religious freedom abroad while neglecting Christians at home. The rise of Christianophobia is not merely a passing crisis; it signals a deeper conflict between the faith that shaped Europe and the secular order that now defines it.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Catholic Herald
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