by Giulio Meotti
November 24, 2018: Pontoise Cathedral burns.
February 6, 2019: Lavaur Cathedral burns.
March 18, 2019: the cathedral-basilica of Saint-Sulpice burns.
April 15, 2019: Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burns.
June 12, 2020: Rennes cathedral burns.
July 18, 2020: Nantes Cathedral burns.
Six great cathedrals of France set on fire.
Now another is added: Rouen, the city which, said Maupassant, “cannot be described, you have to know it”. The city of Madame Bovary’s forbidden loves with Leo, her “Babylon”. The cathedral city painted thirty times by Monet. The city of the “hundred bell towers”and the Place du Vieux-Marché, where Joan of Arc was burned alive during the Hundred Years’ War.
In 2018, 32 churches burned.
In 2019, the year of Notre Dame, 22 churches burned.
In 2023, 23 churches on fire.
In 2024 so far, 12 churches on fire.
And often multiple churches burn in the same city. The Basilica of Saint-Nicolas in Nantes was almost destroyed by fire.
These numbers are not a coincidence, but a clue.
Like that three churches were burned in ten days in Paris. At the church of Notre-Dame-de-Fatima, in the 19th arrondissement of the capital, they used a flammable liquid. At the church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, in the 10th arrondissement, pieces of wood.
In 2024 alone, churches burned in Viarme, Neufchâtel, Agneuax, Dannevoux, Poitiers, Bioussac, Revel… And just to name a few. A number similar to the churches burned in Pakistan, where however we know who the arsonist is, while in Europe we blow the whistle with impunity.
Incredible numbers and not to mention the desecrations and acts of vandalism. And it scares me that no one, except for very few, are scared.
In France dozens of cathedrals, basilicas and village churches are burning but we say: “Maybe there was a problem with the electrical system, maybe someone left a cigarette butt, maybe the alarm was faulty and even if it was criminal we don’t know who it was.”
For Nantes, three fire outbreaks but the authorities favor the cause being an “accident”. The prosecutor’s office is still “investigating” the fire at Notre Dame. They talk about “involuntary destruction by fire”: interesting definition.
Instead, I suspect that these fires have to do with what happened at the synagogues of Bondy, Clichy, Trappes and many other Jewish places of worship in France.
I remember those Islamist posters that said about Notre Dame: “Its construction began in the year 1163 and ended in 1345. It is time to say goodbye to your oratory of polytheism.”
Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of 20 books, including “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter.
His writing has appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone Institute and Die Weltwoche. He is also a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow.
I may be a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t buy it.
I don’t think it’s possible for six cathedrals and hundreds of churches to burn down accidentally and fortuitously. So a question arises in my mind: does the fact that someone hates the symbols of Western faith to the point of wanting to burn them scare us to the point of covering everything up with silence and technical misdirections?
While the seminary in Metz, France, was closing, the construction site for the new Great Mosque was opened a few kilometers away. There have never been atheist civilizations in history (not even the Albania of the communist butcher Hoxha) and nature does not tolerate gaps.
But the alarm bells have stopped ringing for a society as devoted as today’s Europe to the belief that life means sleeping late.
Bonne nuit, West!
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