from Christian Today
There has been a “worrying” number of attacks on Christians across Europe in the past year amid a growing climate of intolerance, a new report has warned.
A total of 2,211 anti-Christian hate crimes were recorded in 2024, with the majority occurring in the UK, France, Germany and Spain. France accounted for the largest share out of these four.
Although this represents a slight decrease on the previous year – there were 2,444 documented anti-Christian hate crimes in 2023 – the attacks in 2024 were more violent in nature, according to the report from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe).
Furthermore, the number of personal attacks on Christian individuals increased from 232 in 2023, to 274 last year. This is despite the fact that data on personal attacks in France and UK was unavailable for 2024. One of the most brutal attacks was the murder of a 76-year-old monk in his monastery in Spain.
There were 94 arson attacks on churches and Christian properties last year – nearly double the number in 2023. One of the buildings targeted was the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint-Omer, France, in September 2024. The 1859 neo-Gothic Catholic church – which had only been restored in 2018 – was all but destroyed in the attack.
Germany suffered the most anti-Christian arson attacks, with 33 documented cases. This follows a warning from the country’s Catholic bishops in October of an “escalation” in the vandalism and desecration of churches.