Catholic Civil Rights League launches church attack database

Last summer’s surge of anti-Catholic arson and vandalism may have abated, but the head of the Catholic Civil Rights League is cautioning that unless Catholics learn to stand together to denounce such hate crimes, worse is yet to come.

Christian Elia, executive director of the CCRL, issued the warning while announcing the launch of the organization’s Church Attacks Database, which aims to keep a detailed, public record of all attacks on the Church in Canada.

The database includes dates, locations, and descriptions of arson, assault, break and enter, the breaking of windows, defacement, desecration, graffiti, general property damage, public disturbances, public indecency, theft, and harmful alteration of church billboards.

The CCRL list identified 153 such incidents covering attacks from 2010 through 2021, but Elia is confident the actual number is far higher, and he is urging the public to make use of the database’s reporting feature to add any historic or current crimes that the list has omitted.

The database identified 10 incidents in the Vancouver archdiocese, but omitted at least one recent attack: the July 4, 2021, attempted arson of the historic Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Mission.

Const. Tania Visintin of the Vancouver Police Department said she was “not aware of any other charges laid in response to the hate crimes that happened over the spring/summer.”

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Vancouver said the database is similar to that kept by other groups, and its existence may assist in the understanding of trends and the formation of future responses. The archdiocese will be sending information about additional incidents to the CCRL; parishes and parishioners may freely submit their own reports, the spokesman said.

The only charges laid in connection with any of the attacks relate to a July 1 incident at St. Jude’s Parish in Vancouver during which two persons splashed orange paint against exterior walls and doors. Emily Luba and Zoe Luba, both 27, were charged with mischief and will appear in court later this month.

The media-relations department of the Vancouver Police Department did not respond to the B.C. Catholic’s request for information on any other investigations it had undertaken into hate-related attacks on the Church, including the incendiary “burn it all down” call to action published on Twitter, by then-BCCLA executive director Harsha Walia, in reference to Catholic churches.

The CCRL first identified the need for its new database in 2020 following arson and vandalism attacks in the Toronto area. “When we investigated a little further, particularly in southern Ontario, we were shocked to find out that there did not seem to be a list – no one was keeping tabs on acts of violence against churches,” Elia said.

This past summer’s explosion of anti-Church crime, which coincided with identification of unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools, gave “a sense of urgency” to completion of the project, Elia said. The database records 57 attacks in 2021 alone – by far the highest number for any year.

“We wish to remind Canadians, and even our own friends and supporters, that if they witness an act of violence in their own community, that they are not alone, unfortunately,” Elia said in an interview with the The B.C. Catholic. He said attacks tend to increase around Christmas and Easter, “which is disturbing, and they have been on the rise in recent years.”

The ultimate goal of the database is to prompt community leaders and politicians to both more strongly denounce and take against anti-Catholic crimes. “But I think, even before that happens, if anyone is going to be roused and called to action, it will be we Catholics ourselves,” Elia said.

He said he hopes Catholics develop a collective “sense of consciousness” about the seriousness of the situation and realize that, unless they “can find the courage to speak together in one voice,” authorities are unlikely to act, and attacks on the Church will only increase.

Activation of the CCRL database followed this month’s release by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe of its 2020 report on hate crimes in Europe. Of the 4,008 crimes documented, 980, or almost 25 per cent, were against Christians – the largest victimized religious group.

Madeleine Enzlberger, executive director of the Vienna-based Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, said in an emailed interview “the results are shocking for Christians” and that the number of crimes may actually be even higher.

Just as Elia urged Catholics to speak out on the issue, Enzlberger said in a news release that her organiztion wants “to empower Christians, so they have the ability to respond correctly to situations of injustice and dare to speak up.”

She added that the dramatically rising figures should be an eye-opener for political and cultural elites. “In media and politics, hatred of Christians is hardly noticed as an increasingly obvious social problem,” Enzlberger said. “The OSCE report only reflects part of this trend, which we have been documenting for years, and yet it is a loud wake-up call against indifference and what seems to have become a ‘fashionable’ bashing of Christians.”

The latest official Canadian figures, made public in March by the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics, showed hate crimes directed at Canadian Catholics increased every year from 2016 to 2019, even while the number of such incidents targeting all religious groups in this country declined in both 2018 and 2019.

Elsewhere, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported in October that at least 111 incidents of vandalism had occurred across 29 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020, when it first began compiling statistics. Incidents included arson; statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted; gravestones defaced with swastikas, and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned; and other destruction and vandalism.

The USCCB drew attention to the 100th such incident, which took place Oct. 10: “satanic and other hateful graffiti scrawled on the walls at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, Colorado.”

“These incidents of vandalism have ranged from the tragic to the obscene, from the transparent to the inexplicable,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty, and Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, said in a joint statement.

“There remains much we do not know about this phenomenon, but at a minimum, they underscore that our society is in sore need of God’s grace.”