After decades of migration from the war-torn Middle East, churches in
Europe have been under attack by migrants, being vandalized and
desecrated.
In Greece alone, from 2015-2020, there were 2,339 incidents of
Orthodox Church desecrations, accounting for more than 92% of cases
among all religious groups in 2020, according to Greece's Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs.
"There appears to be a correlation between the increase in illegal
migration and the incidents of attacks on Greek Orthodox religious
churches and religious spaces during the five-year period which occurred
during the peak of the migration crisis," according to the Greek City Times translation of the report.
The report defined desecrations as acts of "vandalism, burglary,
theft, sacrilege, necromancy, robbery, placement of explosive devices,
and other acts of desecration."
St. Catherine Church in Moria, a small town on the island of Lesvos,
Muslim migrants transformed into a "toilet," flooding with migrants
arriving from Turkey, the Times reported in 2020.
"The smell inside is unbearable," a local said. "The metropolitan of
Mytilene is aware of the situation in the area, nevertheless, he does
not wish to deal with it for his own reasons."
The Times reported the acts of desecration on a deeply religious
society have the Greek people questioning their compassion for migrants
who are proving unwilling "to integrate and conform to the norms and
values of their new countries," according to the Times.
Among the most recent data on the attacks, there were 404 attacks on
religious spaces in Greece in 2020, according to the report.
Christianity accounted for 385 of them:
Orthodox Church: 374 incidents – 92.57% of the total.
Judaism reported 10 incidents of a racist of antisemitic nature, 2.48% of the total, while Islam reported nine cases (2.23%).
"We should remember that Greece spent 400 years under Turkish Islamic rule and that the fight for freedom was bloody," the Times reported
in 2021. "With that in mind it is even more dramatic seeing these
images of fighting-age migrants desecrating Greek holy places and having
no respect for the country they are allegedly seeking refuge in."
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