Pro-Life display vandalized at Saint Louis Catholic church as violence against on the rise

A traditional pro-life display at a St. Louis-area Catholic Church was vandalized sometime between Monday and Tuesday, a police spokesperson told The Lion.

The attack is part of a continuing trend of violence against religious, especially pro-life Christians in the U.S.

The display of white crosses, which memorializes all of the babies killed since abortion was made legal in the United States, was displayed at Saint Paul’s Catholic Church in Fenton, Missouri.

The discovery of the defaced crosses was made by parishioners on Sunday morning, the public information officer (PIO) at the St. Louis County Police Department told The Lion.

Police arrived at the 500 block of New Smizer Mill Rd. at 9:42 a.m., shortly after the discovery. 

The vandals spray-painted the crosses red, and also defaced a banner that urged people to pray for the end of abortion, said the PIO.

The words “Pro-life is a lie, you don’t care if people die” was painted on the banner.

At this time, police say they have no other information to release about the investigation.  

“The police came here this morning but I haven’t heard any more from them as of 3 this afternoon,” Father John Nickolai, St. Paul’s pastor, told CNA in an email.

The attack is just one of many, during an historic surge of crimes against churches, especially those churches espousing pro-life causes.

According to the Family Research Council (FRC), by the end of last year, 420 acts of vandalism or hostility were directed at churches since 2018.  

“At least 57 pro-abortion acts of hostility against churches occurred between January 2022 and September 2022,” said the FRC report.  

In part, the hostility has been encouraged by progressives in the U.S. as pro-family policies have begun to resonate with ordinary Americans, say conservative critics.    

Progressive hostility deepened once the Supreme Court ruled against Roe v. Wade in June of last year. Since then, the Biden administration has been accused of being soft on the resultant violent hate crimes.

In April, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recommended no jail time for a transgender perpetrator who vandalized a church in Bellevue, Washington and assaulted a worker there.  

Instead, in a plea deal, the DOJ recommended three years of probation in lieu of up to one year in jail. 

In fact, investigation seems to being going the other direction: Under Biden’s DOJ, the administration has launched a series of investigations into Catholics, reported the Militant. 

Catholic League president, Bill Donohue, wrote FBI director Christopher Wray in April, protesting against an FBI program that allegedly targeted supposedly radicalized Catholics in mainline diocese.

“This is taking the FBI into a new, and disturbing territory,” Donohue told Wray.   

Reverend James Harden, whose pro-life pregnancy center, CompassCare, was fire bombed last year, told The Lion that the active hostility from the administration points to something more significant than just a hostile presidency.

“The pro-abortion attacks on pro-life groups point to something deeper. The FBI and DOJ slow-walked investigations and refused to indict terrorists targeting pro-life groups for destruction,” Harden said via email.

Harden said that private investigators hired by CompassCare found that the attackers of pro-life entities behave in ways that are sympathetic to radical groups, which “recruit disaffected left-wing extremists, piggy-backing on their causes such as transgenders, pro-aborts, and environmentalists.” 

Critics like Donohue and Harden contend that the radical behavior is not just tolerated by the administration, but encouraged.

Meanwhile in St Louis, Father Nikolai told CNA that St Paul’s church buildings and school suffered no permanent damage.

Wednesday, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said the act of violence “looks to be a hate crime.”  

“I trust prosecutors will soon file charges and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law,” the senator posted to X.