Catholic Church<\/a> in Germany is increasingly worried about worsening vandalism in places of worship.<\/p>\nMethods of vandalism have become more “brutal” in recent years, according to Matthias Kopp, spokesman for the German Bishops’ Conference.<\/p>\n
“Broken offering boxes and overturned, broken candles were always annoying, but since around 2015 we have been dealing with an intensified dimension,” he said.<\/p>\n
While the number of incidents has risen only slightly, Kopp believes the vandals’ behavior shows more open hostility toward Christianity.<\/p>\n
“Excrement in holy water fonts and confessionals, decapitated statues of Christ and saints,” were just some of the examples Kopp offered.<\/p>\n
He lamented that police officials record the crimes as “damage to property,” saying the incidents affect parishioners on a deeper level.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) said the current trend is eroding trust in the idea that a church, open to all, is a safe space.<\/p>\n
Closing churches outside of services is not a step the EKD would like to see taken. “Open churches are not only spaces for worship,” the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
“They are places to go in times of crisis, places of cultural remembrance and social interaction.”<\/p>\n
Germany’s churches get creative about new ways to worship<\/p>\n
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"08\/23\/2025August 23, 2025Catholic Church seeing increased levels of vandalism at places of worship The Catholic Church in Germany…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-87593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}