There has been a “worrying” variety of attacks on Christians across Europe prior to now 12 months amid a growing climate of intolerance, a latest report has warned.
A complete of two,211 anti-Christian hate crimes were recorded in 2024, with the bulk occurring within the UK, France, Germany and Spain. France accounted for the biggest share out of those 4.
Although this represents a slight decrease on the previous 12 months – there have been 2,444 documented anti-Christian hate crimes in 2023 – the attacks in 2024 were more violent in nature, in line with the report from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe).
Furthermore, the number of private attacks on Christian individuals increased from 232 in 2023, to 274 last 12 months. This is despite the indisputable fact that data on personal attacks in France and UK was unavailable for 2024. One of essentially 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 12 months – 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 within the attack.
Germany suffered essentially 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” within the vandalism and desecration of churches.
Establishing the motive for anti-Christian hate incidents is difficult because many offenders usually are not apprehended, the report said, but of the 93 documented cases where it could possibly be established, the driving aspects were radical Islamist ideology (35), radical left-wing ideology (19), radical right-wing ideology (7) and other political motives (11). There were also 15 cases involving satanic symbols or references.
The report highlighted the prosecution of Christians within the UK for praying silently in abortion clinic buffer zones, including Adam Smith-Connor.
“Although these zones were introduced with the stated aim of protecting women from harassment, they’ve increasingly been used to silence expressions of religion – even when entirely non-verbal – raising serious concerns about freedom of faith and expression,” the report said.
The findings were presented to the European Parliament this week.
OIDAC executive director, Anja Tang, said: “Not only are we observing a worrying variety of attacks against Christians, but we also find that Christians are confronted with increasing intolerance inside broader society.
“Moreover, a growing variety of Christians in Europe are facing prosecution for peacefully expressing their beliefs – amongst them Finnish politician Päivi Räsanen who’s since greater than six years standing trial before the court after tweeting a Bible verse in 2019.”
MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen and MEP Miriam Lexmann, co-chairs of the Intergroup on Religious Freedom, Belief and Conscience, are calling on the European Commission and member states to take urgent motion to guard Christians.
They are calling for the appointment of a European Coordinator to deal with attacks and discrimination against Christians, much like coordinators that exist already to deal with antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred.
They also want EU member states to gather and report data on such incidents, and for EU funding to be allocated towards preventative measures.
“Attacks on Christians and discrimination against Christians in Europe gets little attention, however the figures are alarming,” they said.
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