ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 18, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
The walls of Sacred Heart Church, located in downtown Bordeaux, France, were vandalized with satanic graffiti and communist and anarchist symbols the night of March 12-13.
In addition, the vandals burned trash on the church’s esplanade.
The news was confirmed on March 13 by Constance Pluviaud, head of communications for the Archdiocese of Bordeaux.
“On the night of March 12-13, the door and some of the walls of the façade of the Church of the Sacred Heart were defaced with graffiti. A trash fire in front of the church was extinguished by firefighters called to the scene. This fire did not damage the church,” the archdiocese reported in a statement.
Pictures on social media show messages such as “Lucifer is right,” “Devil, take me with you,” “Thank you, Satan,” and “The neighbors hate the Church.”
According to Pluviaud, the parish has filed a complaint with the authorities for property damage.
Étienne Guyot, prefect of New Aquitaine and Gironde Department, lamented on Twitter that Sacred Heart Church was targeted with “hateful epithets and acts of vandalism.”
Guyot also denounced “these intolerable acts. An investigation has been opened so that the perpetrators can be identified and brought to justice.”
The Archdiocese of Bordeaux said it “shares the strong emotions of the Catholic faithful and residents shocked by this act.”
Sacred Heart Church in Bordeaux
The church, located in Gironde Department (the administrative district), was designed by architect Jean-Jules Mondet in the 19th century. It was built at the behest of Cardinal Ferdinand-François-Auguste Donnet, the archbishop of Bordeaux from 1837 to 1882.
Since September 2014, the parish has been administered by priests of the Regnum Christi movement. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed 24 hours a day in the church’s adoration chapel.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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And there are no suspects?? At the risk of sounding like a broken record I will say again: Security cameras and alarms are needed at all Catholic churches. I am aware that some churches simply dont want to spend the money in this way, but to fail to take action makes these pastors derelict in their responsibilities. The fact is a security camera system is well cheaper than attempting to rebuild a church which has been burned to the ground. Wake up. This is not 1940 and the criminal haters who commit these types of crimes no longer fear God or the reaction of neighbors. I dare say some would expect plaudits from certain quarters for their actions. Disgusting.
Our church used to be open 24/7. Then some (probably drunks) went in one night and peed on the carpet by the confessional and did some other minor damage, so it is locked most of the time.
It is located near a major expressway (less than two miles either way for an exit). As a greeting usher (a dwindling number in our parish), I stay in the back waiting for the late arrivals and often wonder what to do if a gunperson arrives. Some parishes lock down unchecked walkin shortly after mass starts, requiring someone to open the door from the inside and some don’t.
Your comment that security cameras will prevent attacks is not necessarily correct, as many will disguise themselves. Resurrection in Lansing MI was nastily vandalized from the outside and they have the hooded pro abortion/anti Christians on tape but who are they? If they are on someone’s payroll they will likely be well heeled in their deviant disguises, paint and efficient tools.
Nowall. I did not say a camera would prevent ALL crimes. But most criminals are not interested in getting caught,and criminals who know there is a camera or alarm system will often do their vandalism elsewhere. Its a known thing in the home alarm business that sometimes even putting up a sign saying your house is alarmed, when in fact it is not, will prompt a criminal to walk away rather than risk detection. And the camera may at least help catch the person who perpetrated the crime.Will it deter 100% of criminals? No, sadly it wont. But it is most certainly worth a try. Your church must be in a rough part of a city for you to worry about armed assailants. Those churches which need the doors locked after services start must be in very sad situations. On the plus side their members must make it a point to arrive at church on time!!! (a bad joke), The “solution” to crime, all crime, quite frankly is that criminals, no matter their color, MUST pay a penalty for their crimes. Failure to deliver consequences for anti social and hate behaviors almost guarantees they will commit the crime again.Society can only tolerate that for so long before we devolve into violent chaos.
“Lucifer is right,” “Devil, take me with you,” “Thank you, Satan”.
Rebellion against divine order exemplified by Lucifer echoes in the words. Freedom, the equivalent of licentiousness, is and always the result, occurring in France, which has a longer legacy of philosophical, intellectual leaning, underway as well in the US. Scandal within the Church gives the moral anarchist greater sense of justification.
Evil manifest here assumes a theological focus. Perhaps premonition of what lies ahead of us. It’s difficult not to entertain this thought with what’s occurring in our Church. We’ve taken leaps of impossible corruption of Christ’s revealed truth in so short a time. Error pouring out of clergy from low to high rank abounds. And yet there’s remarkable light effusing from pockets of faith that say that if things are not well, there remains, though better said, a grace inspired strengthening, hope giving, enlivening.
That the Blessed Sacrament is exposed shows the diabolical origins of these messages and those who wrote them!
Hearts that are searching for God…but in all the wrong places. These are the fruits of a misplaced, misdirected search for God. Hearts in need of conversion.
Amen, Deacon Edward.
I honestly don’t know what’s worse: Attacks like this from the outside, or attacks from heretical and schismatic prelates from the inside.