Thirteen churches, basilicas and cathedrals across France were lit up in red on Wednesday, a colour chosen to symbolise the blood shed by Christians who died for their faith. The event went largely unnoticed by the media, as it did in Britain in July when Westminster Abbey also changed colour for the day.
The initiative is organised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) and its objective is to raise awareness of the plight of Christians persecuted around the world. This is the bigotry rarely talked about in the West. Marches are held in European cities to protest against Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but who rallies in the defence of Christians?
In its sixteenth report, published this summer, ACN said that the persecution of Christians is rising, notably in Africa, China and South-East Asia. The report was released beforeAzerbaijan launched an offensive in Septemberagainst the largely Christian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan. Described in some quarters as “ethnic cleansing”, the Muslim Azerbaijan military forced 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to flee to Armenia. According to reports, the Azerbaijan received military hardware from Israel prior to their attack.
The Western response to the fate of the Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh was broadly one of indifference; there were a few politicians in France who spoke out, such as Bruno Retailleau, leader in the Senate of the centre-right Republican party.He said the mute response of the international community was a “disgrace”, blaming it on Europe’s need for Azerbaijan gas.
Marion Marechal, vice president of the right-wing Reconquest Party, visited Armenia at the start of November. At the same time the leader of the party, Eric Zemmour, a Jew, flew to Israel in a show of support in their war against Hamas. “The fight for civilisation is being waged on all fronts,” [6] declared Marechal, a practising Catholic. “We have just arrived in Armenia to bring a message of support from France and Reconquest 2022 in the face of ethnic cleansing.”
France has experienced a sharp rise in acts categorised as “anti-Christian” in recent years; very occasionally they make global headlines, such as the murder of Father Jacques Hamelby two Islamic extremists in his Normandy church in 2016. More often than not, however, the hatred goes unremarked, even in France.
An exception was the desecration last week of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Rouen. Father Geoffroy de la Tousche, priest of the parishes in central Rouen, described the vandalism as “completely appalling”; it included the breaking of a statue, the theft of the sacred vessels and significant damage to the sanctuary.
The sacrilege occurred in the same week that the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) published a report detailing the sharp increase in what it described as “anti-Christian hate crimes”. There has been a 44 per cent rise in the past 12 months; this aggression is not just physical – such as assaults or the desecration of churches – but also ideological, such as “violations of freedom of religion, expression, association, and conscience”.
The highest number of anti-Christian attacks in 2022 occurred in Germany, followed by Italy and then France. Of particular concern, stated OIDAC, was the prevalence of arson incidents, up 75 per cent on 2021. France reported 105 arson attacks last year, an increase of 45 on 2021, and these have continued in 2023; in one January week alone in Paris three churches were set ablaze. A man was arrested, described by police as a Ukrainian with mental health issues. Often, however, no one is apprehended for the attacks but it is believed that most are committed by far-left radicals.
In 2021 the Ministry of the Interior released a report about crimes classified as anti-religious in France. In all, there were 1,659 such acts of which 857 were categorised as anti-Christian. 589 were logged as anti-Semitic and 213 as anti-Muslim.
Among the thirteen places of worship illuminated in red on Wednesday was the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre. The basilica, the construction of which began in 1875, was a result of France’s defeat to Prussia in the war of 1870. That humiliation was attributed to the Republic’s moral decline, and it was hoped a basilica would lead to a spiritual revival.
That didn’t happen and it’s hard to believe that the basilica’s well-intentioned illumination in red for one evening will arrest the persecution of Christians in France and around the world.
(Photograph from Red Wednesday courtesy of Aid to the Church in Need)
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