The London Mail reports, “A rainbow flag-waving man is wanted for allegedly vandalizing churches across New York City with ‘anti-Christian’ messaging.

“The vandal, who draped himself in an LGBTQ pride flag, is accused of spray painting hateful messages on three churches in Queens last month.

“Surveillance cameras captured the suspect, whose face was covered by a rainbow mask, writing ‘cult’ and ‘anti-gay cult’ on the church exteriors.”

It’s part of a disconcerting—or is the word “alarming”? –trend.

This year, dozens of churches or religious sites in the U.S. have been vandalized or otherwise, and sometimes severely, harmed.

At least 404 incidents have occurred across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020, our bishops report.

Incidents include 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. A list is at the bottom. It excludes incidents where circumstances suggest a motive other than hostility toward the Church.

Just this week, a church in downtown Lourdes, France, was similarly defaced.

This was at the Sacred Heart Church, defaced with anti-Catholic graffiti, months after a restoration project.

We don’t need to sensationalize. But Scripture itself warns: “The dragon was enraged at the woman…”

In times of confusion, conflict, and cultural unraveling, the enemy often lashes out at the visible symbols of God’s Presence.

Forces are gathering. Some of it is Muslim. Some of it is driven by homosexuality. Some of it is simple secular resistance to the sacred. All told, it recalls the desecration during the French Revolution.

As The Pillar reports, France’s Ministry of the Interior “reported 857 anti-Christian acts in 2021, 923 incidents in 2022, and 854 in 2023.”

At the Vatican itself, a crazed man urinated on an altar.

It is something you’d never want to believe—something almost unthinkable in a supposedly “modern,” supposedly “civilized” world: a quiet but persistent assault on the sacred. Not in one place. Not in one troubled neighborhood. But across entire nations, continents, cultures.

A shadow. A pattern. A rising one.

From France to Canada, from the U.S. to Latin America, from Ireland to India—the signs are unmistakable. Church vandalism, once sporadic, is now disturbingly common. Statues smashed. Tabernacles stolen. Hosts desecrated. Fires set. Crosses toppled. Graffiti sprayed across the very walls where generations prayed.

Italian media reported August 24 that human excrement was smeared near the entrance of Sant’Antonio al Seggio church in Aversa, Italy.

On Aug. 25, vandals damaged gravestones at the Church of Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. Cuthbert, in Bedford, England, for the second time in a month.