Religious intolerance in Europe appears to have taken a particularly dark turn, with hate crimes against Christians skyrocketing by a staggering 226% in just a year, according to a sobering report from a Christian persecution watchdog group. While much of Europe’s political class likes to champion its supposed commitment to tolerance, the numbers suggest that Christians are increasingly left out of that equation.
The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe) published its Annual Report 2024, detailing an alarming rise in violence, vandalism, and arson attacks targeting Christians and their places of worship. The report documents 2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes across 35 European countries in 2023, compared to just 749 the previous year. If there’s a silver lining, it’s hard to spot amidst the chaos of Molotov cocktails, machete attacks, and desecrated churches.
The grim trend isn’t confined to petty vandalism or anonymous hostility. Among the incidents highlighted in the report was a January 2023 attack in Algeciras, Spain, where a jihadist targeted two Catholic churches, killing an altar server and injuring four others while shouting, “Death to Christians.” Meanwhile, in Italy, a Tunisian convert to Christianity was beaten and robbed for daring to attend church, with his attackers—also Tunisian—justifying their violence as punishment for his conversion from Islam.
Unsurprisingly, France claimed the unenviable title of having the highest number of anti-Christian hate crimes in Europe, logging nearly 1,000 incidents in 2023 alone. Paris alone saw four churches targeted with Molotov cocktails in January of that year, part of a broader wave of 14 arson attacks on churches documented by October 2024. The growing hostility even forced Catholic nuns in Nantes to flee their home after enduring beatings and verbal abuse, a particularly ironic outcome for a nation that loves to boast about its secular, inclusive values.
Germany isn’t far behind in this disturbing competition, with anti-Christian hate crimes more than doubling from 135 in 2022 to 277 in 2023. The police recorded over 2,000 cases of property damage to Christian places of worship, with nearly a quarter of these incidents involving deliberate desecration. In the UK, hostility toward Christians turned deadly when a convert from Islam was fatally stabbed by his Muslim flatmate, who reportedly believed that apostates “deserved to die.”
While European leaders often wring their hands over perceived threats to pluralism, the evidence suggests they’ve been asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting their Christian communities. With reports indicating that these figures likely undercount the actual number of incidents, the question isn’t whether Europe has a problem—it’s whether its leaders are willing to face it. For now, the response seems more about turning a blind eye than addressing the violence and hostility head-on.
