All these accounts have received independent verification. In France, two churches are desecrated every day on average. PI-News documented 1,063 attacks on Christian churches in 2018 alone. This is a 17 per cent increase over 2017, when ‘only’ 878 attacks were registered. 

Here is a selection from the countless incidents contained in the official report: In February, vandals desecrated and smashed crosses and statues at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, France, and mangled the arms of a statue of the crucified Christ. An altar cloth was burned. In March, vandals plundered Notre-Dame des Enfants Church in Nîmes and daubed a cross in human excrement on the floor of the chancel. Consecrated bread was stolen from the tabernacle and thrown into the dustbin.

Arsonists torched the Church of St Sulpice in Paris soon after midday Mass on Sunday 17th March. Similar reports are coming out of Germany where four churches were vandalised or torched in March. Do the authorities know who is responsible for these continuing and increasingly fierce attacks on churches in Europe? ‘Yes,’ said an official spokesman: ‘when crosses are broken, altars smashed, Bibles set on fire and baptismal fonts overturned, the church doors are often smeared with Islamic expressions such as Allahu Akbar.’