A French bishop will offer a Mass of reparation at a church in the Vendée area after it was desecrated by young teens as they blasted rap music celebrating terrorism.
On Sunday, October 4, teens broadcast on Snapchat their invasion of Saint-Hilaire Church in Soullans, in the Vendée department of western France. A video clip shows young girls singing to French rap glorifying terrorists Mohammed Merah and Salah Abdeslam. While the song refers to “Allah” and has been described as Muslim, it is essentially satanic. The rapper, Boro 700, proclaims, “There’s an electric connection between Satan and me.”
Video footage of the intrusion shows teen boys walking past the altar and tabernacle as the girls sit on the pews of the cathedral. One shot shows that something dark appears to have been spilled on the church floor, but it otherwise leaves unclear what damage was inflicted.
The parish priest and the diocese reported “minor damage,” including “overturned objects” and “burned benches.” Damage notwithstanding, the church is considered to have been desecrated.
“It is above all the desecration aspect that shocks,” the diocese’s head of communication told Valeurs actuelles.
Saint-Hilaire is now closed “as a precaution and pending liturgical repair,” with Masses suspended until the reparation Mass to be held on Monday, October 12 at 7 p.m., presided over by Bishop Renauld de Dinechin of Luçon. The altar will be stripped, sprinkled with holy water, and prayed over.
The mayor of the city, Vincent Jolly, told Valeurs that what happened in the church was “intolerable.” He noted that the oldest child involved is 14 years old.
The incident is part of a broader epidemic of attacks on Catholic churches in France. Vandalism is frequently reported in the country, including the theft of consecrated hosts and desecration of tabernacles.
A 2019 report noted that desecrations of churches, chapels and cemeteries in France are often tracked down to “native” French vandals, the majority of whom are adolescents or young adults.
By 2019, anti-Christian attacks in France had quadrupled over the course of a decade. The cause of the increasing number of attacks is often “Satanism,” argued Bernard Antony, founder of the General Alliance against Racism and for the Respect of French and Christian Identity (AGRIF).
France now has the highest number of documented acts of vandalism, theft, desecration and destruction targeting Catholic churches.
The Vendée, where the teens desecrated Saint-Hilaire Church, is the region in western France where an uprising took place during the Reign of Terror in 1793 and 1794. The leaders of the French Revolution conscripted ordinary men to serve in the revolutionary army and required Catholic priests to vow submission to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and repudiate their commitment to obey the Pope.
The Revolution came to inflict genocide on the deeply Catholic Vendée. The Committee of Public Safety – the revolutionary government in Paris led by Robespierre – expressly ordered every man, woman and child from the province to be killed, their houses and villages to be destroyed, and the very earth of the province to be burned.