When Notre Dame de Paris almost burned down in 2019, owing to a fire started (accidentally?) by workmen, the world was stunned by the near loss of one of the West’s iconic monuments – and a religious landmark at that. But churches around the world are burned or subjected to other types of attack these days, year after year, not by accident, but deliberate anti-Christian acts. Never heard of it? Thereby hangs a tale.
It’s no surprise to anyone that Christian churches suffer frequent attacks in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. They’ve been going on for years, with a sharp rise since 9/11 and the emergence of radical Islamic groups, as I’ve documented in my book The Martyrs of the New Millennium. And these attacks often add insult to injury by being timed to take place at major Christian feasts like Christmas and Easter.
What is surprising, however, is how little attention is paid to the ongoing violence by Western media. In Nigeria, the wholesale slaughter of Christians – thousands in 2025 – and the assaults on churches and Christian schools, together with kidnappings and ransom demands – couldn’t be ignored any longer by news outlets and governments. But the plight of Christians in a dozen other countries never draws serious attention. That failure clearly has a two-fold cause: reluctance among journalists – newsrooms are overwhelmingly progressive – to contribute to “Islamophobia,” and a soft anti-Christian bigotry.
The American political scientist Samuel Huntington asserted that Islam has “bloody borders,” evident not just from recent times but the long interactions between Islam and Christians, Hindus, etc.) Modern analysts often try to deny that these conflicts are religious – in a materialist age political and economic causes are believed to be real, religious motives at best secondary. But the only way to believe that is to be ignorant of centuries of history – and the Koran itself.
Still, it’s surprising that those same media also manage to pass over quickly or, more typically, to ignore outright anti-Christian acts even in the West.
We need not look far for striking examples. Earlier this month in “celebration” of International Women’s Day, churches in Mexico – Catholic Mexico! – came under literal fire by feminist extremists (see video here). But it’s not only there. Throughout Latin America, including Argentina during the reign of Argentine Pope Francis, similar things have happened owing to feminist rage and radical ideologies of varying kinds. In Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, we’ve even seen the continuing saga of Marxist repression of the Church – holdovers from the totalitarian nightmares of the previous century. And those regimes are supported by old-style state Communism in China, which notoriously persecutes religion.
One Mexican feminist proclaimed, “I fear those who pray the Rosary more than I fear criminals.” It’s heartening to see, as in Mexico, Catholic men forming human shields around Church buildings. But where was the coverage – outside of Catholic news organizations – of something that is a clear public fact about our time? It’s not mere Catholic special-pleading to point out that if the target had been a synagogue or mosque, our sharp-eyed watchdogs in the press would be investigating and relentlessly reminding us about systemic prejudice.
Sad to say, the Church itself has sometimes been all-too-willing to blame Catholics for past misdeeds – sometimes when they didn’t even happen.
In 2021, reports in Canada surfaced that ground radar had discovered over 1000 graves – sometimes called “mass graves” – near “residential schools,” government institutions often run by Christians, which took “First Nation” children from their parents and tried to integrate them into the Canadian mainstream. A sensitive subject, of course. But subsequent investigations have uncovered no “mass graves.” Yet many people – including Pope Francis, who made an apologetic visit to Canada – assumed that the reports must be true – and damning. Meanwhile, dozens of churches burned.
For the above reasons and more, the Faith & Reason Institute, in partnership with Aid to the Church in Need USA, has begun a program that we’re calling “Faith under Siege.” It has a dual purpose: to make people better informed about what’s happening to Christians globally (around 330 million Christians are under threat of persecution). And to encourage all of us to do something – at the very least to pray – about it.
One of the organizations we’ve been working with is the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC), which is based in Vienna, Austria. OIDAC just documented, using the European Union’s criteria for “hate crimes,” that there were 29 anti-Christian hate crimes in Europe during January 2026 alone:
In Italy (10), followed by Germany (8), France (7), Spain (3), Austria (2), Poland (2), the Netherlands (1), Portugal (1), Romania (1), and Serbia (1). Outside the European Union, additional incidents were recorded in the United Kingdom (2) and Ukraine (1).
There were also at least 10 cases of arson in EU churches, along with other acts of vandalism, deliberately destroying tabernacles or other religious objects.
International bodies like the EU and the UN have been slow to recognize anti-Christian currents in their member states, though for years both have warned against anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia.” Earlier this month, in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council hosted its first state-sponsored event aimed at remedying that lack, under the title “Standing with Persecuted Christians – Defending Faith and Christian Values.” And called for an EU Special Co-Ordinator to track anti-Christian offenses.
Though the speakers at the event were drawn from the usual suspects, i.e., OIDAC, the Vatican, and Hungary, it’s significant that they’ve spoken out about how hard it is even to be openly Christian in schools and other public spaces these days.
For similar reasons, the Trump administration has created a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. It’s good to acknowledge that It’s Also Happening Here. (Around the time of the Mexico attack, a church in Denver was vandalized, among the 100 or so similar anti-Catholic outrages that occur in America yearly.)
But talk is easy. What we need now, everywhere, by everyone, is action – and results.
