An article in the Catholic Herald called August a “particularly prolific month for church vandalism in Spain”, when seven attacks were reported on Catholic churches in the country. The first of which was in Rute.
On 11 August at Santa Catalina Church in Rute, in the southern part of Córdoba province. not far from our church in Salinas, black paint was poured over the church steps just days before the feast of the Assumption, 15 August, which is of particular importance locally, as the town’s patron is the Virgen del Carmen.
The next attack took place one day later, on 12 August, when someone entered the church of San Martín in Valencia, during adoration of the sacrament and smashed the monstrance containing the consecrated host. In this instance, the attacker was known to the parish priest and is believed to suffer from mental illness. Two days later, on 14 August, at Valencia Cathedral—where the recovered host had been taken from the church of San Martín for safekeeping —a man violently attacked the sacristan and some parishioners during Mass.
Other attacks were recorded throughout the month, with the final incident taking place at the Sagrada Família Basílica in Barcelona, when members of the climate activist group ’Futuro Vegetal’ threw coloured dye at the building, to draw attention to the livestock farming that they believe to be responsible for a majority of this year’s wildfires.
So it looks less like this was an orchestrated campaign and more like a series of local, uncoordinated, incidents. While Spain remains a majority-Catholic country-with more than a thousand men in training for the priesthood at this time – the post Franco years have been marked by some shift away from the Catholic Church, which had previously supported the Franco regime through a Concordat between church and state.
Read the Catholic Herald article here.
Picture above: Parroquia de Santa Catalina, Rute, by Pintolin. Este archivo está disponible bajo la licencia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.