Could the perpetrators have been people who believe that representational art is sinful in itself, and that the veneration of saints is idolatrous, and that “when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Qur’an 47:4)? Possibly. And possibly not. But how many incidents of this kind did France experience before it had a large population of such people?
“Oberhaslach: the chapel of the hermitage Saint-Florent vandalized,” DNA, November 3, 2019:
A statue of Saint Bernadette that was in the chapel of the Hermitage Saint-Florent in Oberhaslach (sector Molsheim) was vandalized on Sunday, said the parish priest.
“I opened the chapel this morning at 9 am and there was nothing. A parishioner, while going to devotions around 3 pm, discovered this decapitated terracotta statue,” explained Father Marc D’Hooge. The statuette may have been used “to try to break the door of the sacristy.”
A fire incident last year
“Last year, we had already had a fire in the toilet of the hermitage,” said the priest, who is inclined to think this was a local act of vandalism. “Wherever I have officiated, I have always made it a point of honor to leave the churches open, I would not want to close them,” he says.
The gendarmes of Schirmeck went to the scene for preliminary investigations; “they advised me to pray about the matter in the hope that someone noticed something,” says the priest.