There has been a "worrying" number of attacks on Christians across Europe in the past year amid a growing climate of intolerance, a new report has warned.
A total of 2,211 anti-Christian hate crimes were recorded in 2024, with the majority occurring in the UK, France, Germany and Spain. France accounted for the largest share out of these four.
Although this represents a slight decrease on the previous year - there were 2,444 documented anti-Christian hate crimes in 2023 - the attacks in 2024 were more violent in nature, according to the report from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe).
Furthermore, the number of personal attacks on Christian individuals increased from 232 in 2023, to 274 last year. This is despite the fact that data on personal attacks in France and UK was unavailable for 2024. One of the most brutal attacks was the murder of a 76-year-old monk in his monastery in Spain.
There were 94 arson attacks on churches and Christian properties last year - nearly double the number in 2023. One of the buildings targeted was the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint-Omer, France, in September 2024. The 1859 neo-Gothic Catholic church - which had only been restored in 2018 - was all but destroyed in the attack.
Germany suffered the most anti-Christian arson attacks, with 33 documented cases. This follows a warning from the country's Catholic bishops in October of an "escalation" in the vandalism and desecration of churches.
Establishing the motive for anti-Christian hate incidents is challenging because many offenders are not apprehended, the report said, but of the 93 documented cases where it could be established, the driving factors were radical Islamist ideology (35), radical left-wing ideology (19), radical right-wing ideology (7) and other political motives (11). There were also 15 cases involving satanic symbols or references.
The report highlighted the prosecution of Christians in the UK for praying silently in abortion clinic buffer zones, including Adam Smith-Connor.
"Although these zones were introduced with the stated aim of protecting women from harassment, they have increasingly been used to silence expressions of faith - even when entirely non-verbal - raising serious concerns about freedom of religion and expression," the report said.
The findings were presented to the European Parliament this week.
OIDAC executive director, Anja Tang, said: "Not only are we observing a worrying number of attacks against Christians, but we also find that Christians are confronted with increasing intolerance within broader society.
"Moreover, a growing number of Christians in Europe are facing prosecution for peacefully expressing their beliefs - among them Finnish politician Päivi Räsanen who is since more than six years standing trial before the court after tweeting a Bible verse in 2019.”
MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen and MEP Miriam Lexmann, co-chairs of the Intergroup on Religious Freedom, Belief and Conscience, are calling on the European Commission and member states to take urgent action to protect Christians.
They are calling for the appointment of a European Coordinator to address attacks and discrimination against Christians, similar to coordinators that already exist to address antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred.
They also want EU member states to collect and report data on such incidents, and for EU funding to be allocated towards preventative measures.
"Attacks on Christians and discrimination against Christians in Europe gets little attention, but the figures are alarming," they said.
