Vandalism and arson attacks on church buildings are following protests in the US about George Floyd’s death.
At least one of the arson attacks could have resulted in injury or death.
A man accused of setting a Florida church on fire is now being held without bail on charges that include attempted second-degree murder and arson.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office charged the 23-year old hours after detectives say he plowed a minivan through the front door of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala, doused the foyer with gasoline and set it on fire, causing extensive damage.
Several people were inside preparing for Mass when the attack occurred early Saturday, but no one was hurt.
That fire was one of at least four attacks on Catholic Church-affiliated buildings and statues from Boston to Los Angeles.
Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle believes blames the “left wing extremists who have been toppling statues of Saint Junipero Serra and attempting to remove a statue of Saint Louis”.
“Given that there were four attacks on Catholic churches nationwide over a 48 hour period, from July 10 to July 12, suspicion, obviously, turns toward [them] … he said in an email.”
Some say the protests are no longer about Floyd or even defunding police, but are about a radical reordering of American society fundamentally at odds with the U.S. religious liberty tradition. The attacks on religious institutions are part of this change.
“These folks have an agenda, which is to fundamentally transform America,” says a board member of the conservative American Civil Rights Union and a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
“If you think about it, Black Lives Matter has an affiliation with the advancement of an ideology and program of action that is closely associated with Marxist ideology, and it has no place for God.”
Over the past four weeks or so, several statues have been torn down or otherwise deliberately damaged. One of these included beheading a statue of The Virgin Mary – an act one commentator called a “disturbing attack on Catholicism and religion.”
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