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.
READ: It’s often Satanists, not Muslims, who are desecrating Catholic churches across France
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.”
L’église du Sacré-Cœur de #Bordeaux a été visée hier soir par des tags haineux et des actes de vandalisme. Le préfet Étienne GUYOT dénonce ces actes intolérables. Une enquête a été ouverte pour que les auteurs puissent être identifiés et traduits en justice.
— Préfet de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine et de la Gironde (@PrefAquitaine33) March 13, 2023
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.
The FBI is planning to intensify its “assessment” and “mitigation” of “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” over the next 12 to 24 months according to an explosive document from a former agent turned whistleblower.
SIGN & SHARE: Tell the FBI to stop its surviellance of faithful Catholics and focus on the real criminals.
The bombshell 8-page memo was released by former FBI agent Kyle Serpahin on his website UncoveredDC Wednesday. The report, written by an FBI analyst in Richmond, Virginia, was published for internal agency use only on January 23, is titled, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
Seraphin describes the briefing as an “intelligence product” that, though not being exhaustive, can be used as an initial reference point for the agency to “prop up” future investigations on the subject. He says he obtained the document from an anonymous Baptist employee for the agency.
“This is the first FBI Richmond domain product to focus on the interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in the Radical Traditional Catholic movement,” the document states. “A search of FBI databases indicates this is also the first FBI finished intelligence product to specifically address this environmental variable.”
SIGN: Politically-motivated witch-hunts of faithful Catholics cannot be allowed in a civilized society
Among the most controversial aspects of the memo is that it directly cites a defamatory study conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on the subject “Radical Traditional Catholicism.” The SPLC has long been rejected as a legitimate resource for the FBI, Seraphin says, but in this instance, it is being relied on as a primary source to justify its efforts. The memo also references three anti-Catholic smear articles (here, here, and here) published by leftwing websites Salon and The Atlantic to defend its monitoring.
The report alleges that its real motivation is a concern that “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology” possesses an “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, and white supremacy” outlook, and that this presents a threat to the US’s domestic well-being. The report further claims that adherents to RTC ideology “frequently share language and symbolism, such as crusader references or anti-Semitic discourses” online that pro-life white nationalists also support.
SIGN: The FBI’s smear campaign against Catholics cannot be allowed to stand
Please send this petition to as many concerned Americans as possible – we cannot allow the continued politicization of the FBI.
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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.
🇫🇷 | L’église Sainte-Anne d’Arvor (Lorient) a été vandalisée hier, en plein jour. Des statues ont été détruites, et la crèche de Noël renversée.
« Ça fait mal. Ce sont les signes religieux qui ont été visés, il n’y a pas eu de vol », témoigne le prêtre. (Via France Télévisions) pic.twitter.com/cz9Je9V4Z1
— Daily Christ (@dailychretiens) December 23, 2022
Only days before, the Church of St. Roch in Paris was vandalized with anti-Catholic graffiti.
À quelques jours de Noël, scandaleuses inscriptions sur l’église Saint-Roch, sans doute en marge de la manifestation des partisans de Philippot ce week-end. Plainte a été déposée au commissariat et nettoyage démarré par les équipes de propreté de la ville. Merci aux agents. pic.twitter.com/XVjfxfytMF
— Ariel Weil (@ArielWeilT) December 21, 2022
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.
RELATED: Abortion activists vandalize churches in Latin America to celebrate International Women’s Day