Hundreds of Roman Catholic churches have been attacked since the violence that erupted across the country following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, according to a Catholic nonprofit.
Since May 2020, there have been nearly 300 attacks on US Catholic churches as far away as Emmonak, Alaska, with the most recent count at 275 as of Sunday, according to a CatholicVote tracker.
The religious nonprofit organization noted that “while the riots and looting mostly subsided in the summer of 2020, attacks on Catholic churches continued and escalated.”
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A 90-year-old statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was vandalized at a Texas cathedral in September 2020, according to a report.
(Catholic Diocese of El Paso)
Attacks on churches include arson, broken windows, decapitated statues, and satanic graffiti. Some 118 incidents have been recorded since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Health Organization, which struck down federal abortion protections from Roe v. Wade.
While some of the attacks involved theft, the “vast majority” of recorded incidents were simply destruction of property, which the group said indicates “that the primary motive is not material gain,” according to the report.
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Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Houston was vandalized with a pro-abortion message.
(Fox 26 Houston)
A Family Research Council report released in December also found that attacks on churches spiked after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The council’s report, entitled “Hostility against churches is on the rise in the United Statesfound that there were 420 acts of hostility against 397 churches between January 2018 and September 2022. The attacks took place in 45 US states and Washington, DC, according to the report.
The front door of St. Bernard Catholic Church in Madison, Wisconsin, was vandalized on July 3, 2022.
(Fox 47 Madison)
The authors of that report attributed the rise in attacks to “a collapse in society’s reverence and respect for places of worship and religion, in this case, churches and Christianity.”
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“Americans seem increasingly comfortable attacking church buildings, pointing to a broader societal problem of marginalization of core Christian beliefs, including those that touch on burning political issues related to human dignity and sexuality,” it says. The report.
A message spray-painted in June on the wall of St. Louise Catholic Church in Bellevue, Washington reads: “hate religion.”
(FOX13 Seattle)
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CatholicVote noted that only 25% of the church attacks it has recorded have led to an arrest.
In December 2021, CatholicVote President Brian Burch sent a letter to the Justice Department, citing at least 114 cases since May 2020 and criticizing its leadership for “failing to make any significant effort to raise awareness or address the disturbing rise of hate-filled attacks against Catholics”. religious symbols, shrines, statues and churches”.
Vandalism at Sacred Heart of Mary Church in Boulder, Colorado, last May.
(Mark Haas)
Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta responded to Burch’s letter on January 28, 2022, promising a “15-day review to ensure all appropriate resources are in place to protect places of worship.”
“The FBI works closely with our law enforcement partners to investigate threats and attacks against places of worship,” the FBI told Fox News Digital in a statement. “Frequently, these investigations are conducted jointly by the FBI and state and local law enforcement and are prosecuted under state statutes.”
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“If an investigation determines that a suspect violated one of the federal hate crime statutes, then the FBI will coordinate our investigation with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which will make the final determination as to whether the suspect will be charged or prosecuted. with a federal hate crime,” the FBI continued.
CompassCare, which has pro-life pregnancy centers throughout New York State, recently announced that it would join forces with the Thomas More Society.
(CompassCare)
Pro-life facilities have also faced a barrage of attacks since the Dobbs decision. CompassCare, a network of crisis pregnancy centers in upstate New York, announced earlier this month that it had hired private investigators to investigate a firebomb attack on one of its facilities last June.
CompassCare CEO Jim Harden said that while the FBI is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone involved in the pregnancy center attacks, he is skeptical of law enforcement’s determination federal public to get to the bottom of them.
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“What it looks like to us is that they have made decisions about how they allocate investigative resources and have chosen not to allocate them,” Harden told Fox News Digital. “You have 78 bona fide violations of the FACE Act in pro-life organizations specifically targeting them. We know these are hate crimes. They fit that definition. Where’s the prosecution?”
“The FBI works closely with our law enforcement partners to investigate threats and attacks against places of worship,” the FBI told Fox News Digital in a statement.
(iStock)
The FBI told Fox News Digital that the bureau “continues to investigate a series of attacks and threats targeting pregnancy resource centers, religious organizations, and reproductive health clinics across the country, as well as court buildings, including the Court.” US Supreme.”
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“The incidents are being investigated as possible acts of domestic violent extremism, FACE Act violations, or violent crime matters, depending on the facts of each case,” the FBI continued. “The FBI takes all violence and threats of violence very seriously, and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners at the national, state, and local levels to investigate these incidents.”
