An apparent ongoing anti-Christian campaign in Canada has resulted in a total of 45 churches being attacked with some of the buildings being burned to the ground.
As CBN News has reported, terrorists are responsible for the attacks against mainly Roman Catholic churches serving indigenous congregations.
The crimes stem from far-left terrorists with a Marxist ideology whose sole purpose is to strike fear in Canadians for practicing their faith.
CTV News reports indigenous leaders are calling for the church arsons to stop.
“Burning down churches is not in solidarity with us indigenous people. As I said we do not destroy people’s places of worship,” said Jenn Allan-Riley, an assistant Pentecostal minister at Living Waters Church during a press conference last week.
“We’re concerned about the burning and defacing of churches bringing more strife, depression, and anxiety to those already in pain and mourning,” she said.
Seventeen of the 45 church buildings attacked have suffered fire damage or completely burned to the ground.
Counter Signal.com reports the fires and the vandalism span six provinces and the Northwest Territories. Some of the attacks have been in the heartland of First Nation’s territory.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said they are investigating the church fires to see if they are connected.
As CBN News reported, terrorists have also targeted other churches not affiliated with the Roman Catholic church. Last week, the building housing the House of Prayer Alliance Church in Calgary was set on fire.
Battalion Chief Keith Stahl told CBC News the fire was mostly confined to the outside of the building, but the interior did have heavy smoke damage. Police believe the fire was intentionally set, but have no suspects.
The congregation of 230 people has been unable to meet in the building due to the fire damage.
Keean Bexte tweeted CounterSignal.com’s interview with the church’s pastor.
“We are refugees. We escaped from Vietnam to come here to get more freedom, to live, and we think it was a good country – and now it happened to our church,” Pastor Nguyen said. “Maybe it is not safe to be here in Canada compared to Vietnam.”
The church fires were reported across Canada following the recent discoveries of unmarked graves on the sites of former boarding schools for Indigenous children, many of which were run by churches. The remains of nearly 1,000 bodies have been found so far, most of them Indigenous children.
The schools weren’t just in Canada. The American Magazine, a Jesuit journal, reports by 1926 there were 357 schools in 30 states with more than 60,000 children. Catholic religious orders in the United States administered 84 of the schools. Jesuits managed four of them.
Since Catholic orders carried out similar missions in the U.S., and U.S. funding was even given to them, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has now ordered an investigation into the history of these schools and a search for graves of children who may have perished at them.
On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his “heart breaks” after the discovery of more unmarked graves on the grounds of an Indigenous residential school in the southern Gulf Islands off the British Columbia coast.
The Penelakut Tribe says more than 160 undocumented and unmarked graves have been found on the site of the former Kuper Island Indian Industrial School.
“I recognize these findings only deepen the pain that families, survivors, and all Indigenous peoples and communities are already feeling as they reaffirm the truth that they have long known,” Trudeau said during a news conference Tuesday in Ottawa.
“To members of the Penelakut Tribe, we are here for you. We cannot bring back those who are lost but we can and will continue to tell the truth,” Trudeau said.
CBN News has contacted the RCMP for an update on its investigation. We’ll update this story as soon as we hear back from them.
SOURCE: CBN NEWS