Catholic church in France vandalized with satanic messages, nearly set on fire

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Catholic church in France vandalized with satanic messages, nearly set on fire
In mid-March, Sacred Heart Church in Bordeaux was desecrated by vandals who marked the church’s doors and walls with satanic and communist phrases and symbols.



Church of the Sacred Heart, Bordeaux
Olivier432/WikiCommons

Mar 21, 2023
BORDEAUX, France (LifeSiteNews)— Another Catholic church in France was vandalized this month.

In mid-March, Sacred Heart Church in Bordeaux was desecrated by vandals who marked the church’s doors and walls with satanic and communist phrases and symbols. A fire was lit in the church’s courtyard, but it was extinguished before causing damage to the building.

“During the night of March 12 to 13, the door and some of the walls of the facade of the Church of the Sacred Heart were defaced with graffiti,” said the Archdiocese of Bordeaux’s head of communications, Constance Pluviaud, in a statement. “A trash fire in front of the church was extinguished by firefighters called to the scene. This fire did not damage the church.”

Pluviaud revealed that the archdiocese had filed a complaint about the damages by Sunday evening, March 12 and described the curia’s feelings.

“The diocese shares the emotion of the Catholic faithful and the inhabitants shocked by this act,” she said.

According to local news sources, on the evening of March 12, locals saw a crowd of young people, many of them in disguises, gathered in front of the church, drinking and listening to music. Pictures of the damage show messages such as “Lucifer is right,” “Devil, take me with you,” “Thank you, Satan,” and “The neighbors hate the Church” scrawled on the church. 

The prefect, or state representative, of New Aquitaine, a region in the southwest of France, condemned the attack in a tweet on March 13, saying an investigation was underway. 

“The Church of the Sacred Heart of #Bordeaux was targeted last night by hate tags and acts of vandalism,” tweeted the prefect, Étienne Guyot, following the attack. 

Guyot denounced the act of vandalism as “intolerable,” saying that “an investigation has been opened so that the perpetrators can be identified and brought to justice.”

Sacred Heart Church was commissioned in 1837 by the archbishop of the time, Cardinal Ferdinand-François-Auguste Donnet. It was built by Jean-Jules Mondet, an architect credited with other neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic churches in France.

Sadly, this is not the only church to suffer recent vandalism. Over the last few years, France has become a hotbed for anti-Christian sentiment, with attacks on Catholics and Catholic churches alike becoming the norm. LifeSiteNews has reported that in 2018 alone, France’s Ministry of the Interior documented 1,063 anti-Christian acts. These numbers have only increased since then, with reports showing that there was a 70% increase in anti-Catholic hate crimes from 2019 to 2020.

In October 2020, LifeSite reported that three Catholics were killed in an attack on Our Lady of the Assumption parish in Nice, France by an Islamic terrorist. They also reported that a similar attack occurred in Nice in April 2022, when a 31-year-old national stabbed a priest and nun multiple times shortly before the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass at the church of Saint Pierre d’Arène. 

In 2021, France saw an onslaught of attacks, with numerous acts of terrorism perpetrated against Catholic churches across the country. A report put out by the French Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX)  details many of these attacks, one of which included an attack on the Holy Eucharist. 

As mentioned in the report, one such attack occurred on the night of November 21, when the Church of  St. Joseph in Cannes in the diocese of Nice was broken into by vandals who took the Eucharist from the tabernacle and desecrated it.  St. Jean-Baptiste Church in Ambert, diocese of Clermont-Ferrand, was attacked multiple times by vandals who attempted twice to set the church on fire, once on the feast of All Saints, and then again on December 5. 

According to the SSPX, the most violent of the attacks occurred against St. Anne d’Arvor Church in Lorient last year, where terrorists destroyed three large plaster statues of Our Lady, St. Therese, and St. Joan of Arc, as well as the Church’s nativity scene, only three days before Christmas and in broad daylight. 

Only days before, the Church of St. Roch in Paris was vandalized with anti-Catholic graffiti. 

While rampant in France, the targeting of Catholic churches has not been limited to Europe, but has been happening also in the Americas, with LifeSiteNews reporting last week that since the spring of 2020, at least 301 Catholic churches in the United States have been vandalized.

RELATED: Over 300 Catholic churches hit with destructive acts of vandalism since spring 2020: report

Most recently, on March 8, various churches across Latin America were vandalized by pro-abortion activists to mark the worldwide observance of International Women’s Day. As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, rioters in Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador and Mexico, as well as other countries, broke windows, attacked police and civilians, and covered walls with anti-life graffiti and slogans in support of their so-called “right” to abortion access.