Christian symbols and beliefs are increasing being treated with a contempt that would be unthinkable if directed elsewhere
Two Israeli soldiers were sentenced to 30 days in jail after one used a sledgehammer to smash a statue of the crucifixion in southern Lebanon
May 01, 2026 at 10:18am BST
THERE is something both shocking and strangely familiar about recent images from southern Lebanon: an Israeli soldier, sledgehammer in hand, smashing a crucifix and striking the figure of Christ.
It invites outrage, and rightly so. Not simply because it targets a sacred image, but because it echoes – however faintly – the humiliation the image represents.
The crucifix is not decorative. It is the sign of a man publicly stripped, mocked, and killed. To desecrate it is, in a sense, to repeat the act.
In a very different register, recent weeks have also seen the circulation of AI-generated images of Donald Trump depicted as Christ the healer – images that, while not violent, draw on the same readiness to appropriate what is sacred without any clear sense of its meaning or limits.
The two are not equivalent. But they are not unrelated. If one is physical desecration, the other points to a cultural one – less visible, but no less telling.
It is in that light that the incident in Lebanon should be seen. Condemnation has been swift in some quarters. Yet, writing in The Spectator, Melanie McDonagh points to something more unsettling: such incidents rarely stand alone.
Her account of harassment of clergy, obstruction of worship, and hostility in and around the Holy Land suggests something less accidental and more ambient. Not systemic in a formal sense, perhaps, but certainly not isolated.
Even so, perspective matters. As grotesque as the smashed crucifix is, it remains an attack on an image – symbolic violence set against a world in which the desecration of human life has become almost routine.
The 2025 Religious Freedom in the World report by respected charity Aid to the Church in Need found that around 5.4 billion people – nearly two-thirds of the world’s population – live in countries where religious freedom is seriously violated. The figure applies across all faiths, but Christians remain among the most widely affected.
Other datasets, including those cited in UK parliamentary briefings, estimate that several thousand Christians are killed each year for faith-related reasons, with over 4,400 deaths recorded in 2024, alongside thousands of attacks on churches and Christian communities.
Churches destroyed, clergy abducted, women targeted, entire populations displaced: this is not exaggeration but fact. The smashed crucifix must be set alongside these realities—not to diminish it, but to see it clearly.
And yet, to leave it there would be to miss something important.
What makes such incidents troubling is not only their offensiveness, but what they reveal: a growing permission, in certain contexts, to treat Christian symbols – and Christian belief – with a contempt that would be unthinkable if directed elsewhere.
What makes such incidents troubling is not only their offensiveness, but what they reveal: a growing permission, in certain contexts, to treat Christian symbols – and Christian belief – with a contempt that would be unthinkable if directed elsewhere
That was illustrated clearly in Belgium. A popular breakfast programme on the national broadcaster VRT aired a ‘Blue Monday’ sketch in which presenters smashed statues of Jesus and Mary for comic effect. The broadcaster later apologised, acknowledging it had “misjudged” the segment.
What proved more revealing came afterwards, when Irish journalist Colm Flynn – well known across both religious and mainstream media – pressed those involved on their reasoning. Why was it acceptable to treat Christian imagery in this way? Would the same be done with Jewish or Muslim sacred objects?
The response faltered. There were appeals to humour, context, and Christianity’s majority status. But when the comparison was pressed, the hesitation was unmistakable. What they would not do to Jewish or Muslim symbols, they felt free to do with Christian ones.
That, in turn, rests on a familiar premise: that Christianity is treated less as a living faith than as a cultural inheritance – something to draw on, reinterpret, or disregard.
The crucifix becomes not a sign of devotion, but a prop. Once that shift takes hold, a licence follows.
That licence is visible closer to home. A recent report by a Vienna-based research and advocacy group monitoring discrimination against Christians in Europe recorded over 2,400 anti-Christian hate incidents in a single year, including vandalism, arson, and physical assault. The United Kingdom features consistently among the countries where such incidents are documented.
Survey data also suggests that more than half of Christians in some studies report hostility or ridicule in public or professional life, with younger Christians particularly likely to self-censor.
This is not persecution in the sense experienced in parts of Africa, Asia, or the Middle East. No serious observer would claim equivalence. But neither is it negligible. It represents a different register of the same reality: a narrowing of the space in which Christian belief can be expressed without penalty, distortion, or dismissal.
The danger lies in normalisation.
When a crucifix is smashed in Lebanon, it is recognised – at least by some – as an outrage. When Christian belief is marginalised or caricatured in Western public life, it is more likely to be framed as progress, or as the cost of pluralism. The language differs, but the underlying dynamic is not unrelated.
In both cases, there is a failure to recognise what is at stake as something that carries meaning for real people – something that deserves, at the very least, respect.
None of this requires a defensive posture. Christianity is not fragile. The figure on the cross is not diminished by the blows of a hammer, nor by the derision of a culture uneasy with its inheritance. If anything, the crucifix already anticipates such responses: a God who enters into humiliation rather than evading it.
But theological resilience should not be mistaken for cultural indifference. A society comfortable with disparaging one tradition while carefully insulating others from offence is not neutral. It is making a judgment – one that deserves to be named.
The more difficult task is to hold together two truths. The desecration of symbols matters, because symbols mediate meaning, memory, and identity. To attack them is, in a small but real way, to wound the communities for whom they carry weight.
But the desecration of human life matters more. Infinitely more. Any discussion of religious offence that loses sight of that hierarchy risks distortion.
The temptation is to choose between these truths: to fixate on symbolic slights, or to dismiss them in the face of greater horrors. The more honest position is to refuse that choice: to say the smashing of a crucifix is wrong while recognising that it is a sign, not the substance, of a deeper disorder.
A disorder in which reverence itself is becoming harder to sustain – seen not only in acts of vandalism or careless satire, but in the growing ease with which what is sacred is drawn into cultural or political projects and reshaped to fit them.
The recent images of Donald Trump depicted as Christ the healer belong to that same pattern: many were rightly appalled, yet others defended them, revealing how readily the language and imagery of faith can be pressed into service for ends far removed from its own claims.
And that, perhaps, is where the desecration of Christian imagery in Lebanon, Belgium, Britain – and, in a different register, the United States – intersect. Not in a single narrative of persecution, but in a shared erosion of the instinct to treat what others hold sacred with care.
It is a small instinct, easily dismissed – but once lost, not easily regained.
:: Fr Dominic McGrattan is a priest in the Down and Connor diocese and Chaplain at Queen’s University Belfast
A chara, I hope you and yours are well. After a tireless campaign for truth and justice spanning nearly 54 years, the victims and survivors of the Springhill-Westrock Massacre of 9th July 1972 heard what they knew all along – their loved ones were innocent and unjustifiably killed.It has been Paper Trail’s honour to support their campaign with legacy archive research over the years. In turn (because of new evidence we discovered), this has helped other families impacted by violence around that period too. With family support yesterday, we published our own investigation into the 1st Battalion King’s Regiment. 🎥 Watch: Killer Kings and its Bloody Tour of West Belfast in 1972
Rather than a couple of out-of-control loose cannons within a section of C Company 1 Kings over a couple of hours, Paper Trail investigated a number of similar murders and cover-ups across all the Companies and over the 4-month tour of duty. Hopefully, these killings will be re-investigated in new inquests as promised, but – taken together – I believe they show a pattern of lawlessness and impunity, rather than an isolated loss of control. Hence why we call them the Killer Kings. The legal teams have been made aware of this, of course, and we will support the families in the coming years. Don’t forget you can subscribe for free to our YouTube channel, Paper Trail Pro. Kind regards,Ciarán
A coroner has ruled that British soldiers did not use reasonable force in the 1972 Springhill and Westrock massacre in west Belfast, finding that five innocent civilians – including a priest, a father-of-six and three teenagers – were killed in aimed shots and posed no threat at the time.
The findings, delivered after a long-running inquest, brought some closure to 54 years of grief and campaigning against a hostile justice system. The victims were John Dougal, Patrick Butler, Father Noel Fitzpatrick, David McCafferty and Margaret Gargan. The original inquest in 1973 returned an open verdict.
The coroner found that all five of the deceased were shot by soldiers from the 1st Kings Regiment, firing from one location and in breach of the British Army’s own yellow card rules of engagement.
Justice Scoffield concluded that Father Noel Fitzpatrick, 42, Patrick Butler, 38, and David McCafferty, 14, were shot dead at Westrock Drive around 10pm on 9 July 1972, and that the force used was “not reasonable.” He said they were shot by one soldier firing from Corry’s timber yard.
He said Fr Fitzpatrick and Mr Butler were killed by the same bullet and that the soldier could not have believed any of them were armed. The coroner found that “no warning was shouted” and said the priest, who was “recognisable as a priest,” stepped out from cover unarmed before being shot.
The judge also concluded that David McCafferty “was not armed” and “posed no threat to anyone” when he was killed by the same soldier, adding that he had been assisting the other two after they were shot. Regarding that killing, he found that the soldier did not have an honest belief that he was under immediate danger or attack.
The court also heard that 16-year-old John Dougal was shot in the back while running away and trying to take cover, with the judge finding it was “more likely than not” that he had also been shot by the same soldier. He said there was “no evidence whatsoever that a warning was shouted” and ruled that the force used was not reasonable even if Dougal had been armed.
On Margaret Gargan, 13, the coroner concluded she was shot by a second soldier, also from Corry’s Yard, in an aimed shot and that she “posed no risk at all.” He said she was “talking to her friends in the street” and that no warning was given before the fatal shot was fired.
The inquest also found that soldiers “overreacted to perceived threats and ultimately lost control.” Justice Scoffield said some sporadic rounds had been fired earlier in the evening, but he rejected the civilian case that no round had been fired that day.
Families of the dead arrived at Belfast Coroner’s Court holding a banner reading “time for truth” and were met with applause. A number of political representatives and supporters were present, including Sinn Féin junior minister Aisling Reilly, Sinn Féin MP Paul Maskey and People Before Profit Assembly member Gerry Carroll.
In a joint statement, the families said they “stand together after almost 54 years of grief, loss, and unanswered questions.” They said: “For us, this is not history; it is something we have lived with every day.” They added: “We have consistently maintained that those who died were innocent civilians, and that the force used on that day was indiscriminate and unjustified.”
Relatives for Justice expressed solidarity, stating: “Our sincere thoughts and gratitude are with these extraordinary families this evening. They have borne unmerciful hardship and trauma. Their courage in the face of the British state’s impunity has been truly inspiring.”
The 1992 Irish American Presidential Forum. Bill Clinton delivers a series of pledges to Irish America. Sitting beside him is forum moderator Jack Irwin. Martin Galvin is one of the three journalists asking questions of Clinton and his seated in the middle
Irish Northern Aid Documentary Wins ‘Royal’ Award
News April 30, 2026 by Martin Galvin
RTÉ’s acclaimed documentary “NORAID: IRISH AMERICA AND THE IRA” was named the Best Factual Series at the Royal Television Society Ireland Awards in Dublin on April 16th.
The two part series tells how Irish Americans, over a quarter century, defied opposition, indeed vilification by the British, Irish and American governments, to deliver vital political backing and publicity for the Irish Republican Army struggle, and millions of dollars for prisoners’ families.
Director Kevin Brannigan and Producer Jamie Goldrick of Up and Away Media won the coveted award for telling a story that had been all but hidden.
Early on in the documentary viewers see Michael Flannery, the Tipperary IRA Veteran of the Black and Tan, and Civil Wars, who fifty years later helped found Irish Northern Aid or Noraid, this at a time when money was desperately needed by the families of those arrested or interned.
Viewers glimpse the forces lined up against Noraid. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shrilly condemns Noraid support. She is echoed by Irish Prime Ministers Charles Haughey, Liam Cosgrave and even American President Ronald Reagan.
Former New York Governor Hugh Carey, one of the “Four Horseman,” who along with Ted Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Tip O’Neill aligned with John Hume and Irish officials against Sinn Féin, bitterly attacks Michael Flannery as Grand Marshal leading the 1983 New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade – one of the largest ever held despite boycotts.
Hostile press is exemplified by a 1985 Irish Independent editorial expressing outrage that Americans would want to see the north firsthand, or hear Irish Republican leaders banned from broadcast airways, and denied visas to the United States.
News coverage termed Irish Republican Army Volunteers, “sectarian terrorists” or “mindless criminals” whose American supporters must be “misguided” or “misty-eyed.” British officials even blamed Irish Americans, not British injustice, for the Irish conflict, or incidents like the brutal Internment Day 1984 attack on peaceful demonstrators, including 130 Noraid tour members, watched by millions, during American network coverage of the Los Angeles Olympics.
Top British spy Denis Donaldson would be sent to wreck Noraid from within, while an FBI official admits getting frequent demands for action from the White House at Britain’s behest.
Against this array, Irish Americans, some born in Ireland and others generations removed, joined together simply because they saw Irish men and women in a desperate struggle against British rule, and would not stand idly by.
For them, tirades by Thatcher, or her various allies, were accolades to be repeated aloud at rallies with cheers and laughter. It was truly NORAID: IRISH AMERICA AND THE IRA, because as long as Noraid members were willing to take a stand, congressmen, labor leaders, civil rights lawyers, Hibernians and other Irish organizations were willing to stand with them.
Brannigan and Goldrick tell this remarkable story by mixing historic archival film with first hand interviews of Noraid members. As the words of the 1916 Easter Proclamation, “supported by her exiled children in America” are highlighted, John McDonagh explains how Irish Americans were part of every struggle for freedom in Ireland, since the early 1800s. John himself played a major role in a Times Square display, planned as a Christmas message to Irish political prisoners, which unexpectedly became an international news story, courtesy of hysterical British tabloids.
Brigid Brannigan from South Armagh and Fr. Patrick Maloney from Limerick were two of the Irish-born members who joined Noraid when conflict broke out and carried the organization during its early years, headquartered in a small Bronx office with two phones, taking on the unlimited resources of the British.
Kathleen Savage and Michael Shanley met on the 1985 fact-finding visit, which so outraged the Irish Independent. Kathleen defied Royal Ulster Constabulary commands to surrender her camera, while Michael was arrested for shouting “British troops out of Ireland” in a chance encounter with a British royal in New York.
He describes his emotional trip to Manhattan on the day of Bobby Sands’ funeral, followed by a television news clip, “They are massing by the thousands outside the British Consulate outraged by the death of Bobby Sands.”
Chris Byrne’s song “Fenians” captured the spirit of Noraid, and the former New York City Policeman described how the New York City Emerald Society Pipe Band came to march in honor of the Hunger Strikers in Bundoran County Donegal, despite Gardai complaints, in what became “the band’s finest hour.”
This documentary goes right at questions of whether Noraid monies went to finance arms for the IRA. The producers managed to get groundbreaking interviews with three men, Gabriel Megahey, John Crawley and Patrick Nee, who make no apologies for helping arm IRA Volunteers during the Troubles, and served years of imprisonment for doing so.
They each made the point, categorically, that not only were Noraid monies not used for arms purchases, but it would have been foolhardy to become involved with a public organization like Noraid.
The program traces how Noraid was key to the decades-long fight to put the Irish conflict on the American presidential agenda, with a Noraid leader positioned to ask candidate Bill Clinton to pledge a visa for Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams during the historic Irish American Presidential Forum of 1992. Clinton’s Irish pledges followed by his election victory opened the door for the American involvement that followed.
That breakthrough can be traced directly to the H-Blocks and ultimately the Hunger Strikers, whose inspiration transformed Noraid. In 1978 two Irish Republicans came to New York with a message from H-Block prison leader Brendan Hughes, that the Blanketmen needed American publicity and political pressure to win their fight against brutal British attempts to break them.
A key part of the reorganization and campaign which followed were Blanketmen, Ciaran Nugent, Fra McCann, Joe Maguire and Seamus Delaney coming illegally for rallies organized by Noraid across the U.S., making the H-Blocks an American issue. Viewers see film of one Noraid rally outside New York’s Lincoln Center where 15,000 stood with siblings of Bobby Sands, Patsy O’Hara, Ray McCreesh and Joe McDonnell to humiliate Britain’s then Prince Charles.
The daily rallies across America during the 1981 Hunger Strike contributed to the victory over criminalization. They also convinced New York Assemblyman John Dearie that we could make Ireland a presidential issue using candidate forums.
The influx of new supporters led to bringing hundreds of Americans like Kathleen Savage and Michael Shanley to see the six counties for the first time. When the Thatcher government tried to quell Noraid supported by an Exclusion Order forbidding me entry to the six counties, Sinn Féin decided the ban must be challenged. The televised scenes of the murderous RUC attack on unarmed Internment Day demonstrators shocked millions by showing the true face of British rule.
There followed political battles around the MacBride Principles and Irish Political Deportees that time would not permit to be included in the two hour program. Ultimately, with Clinton’s pledges and election victory, many of those who had condemned Noraid and Sinn Féin now came around.
Noraid and its historic contributions against overwhelming opposition seemed all but whitewashed out of history.
Now Kevin Brannigan and Jamie Goldrick have told that story with a skill and authenticity that won “Noraid: Irish America and the IRA” the prestigious Royal Television Society award as Best Factual Series.
It also won them plaudits from former Noraid members, who never expected credit but are thankful to have their story told.
Martin Galvin was National Publicity Director of Noraid from 1979-1995 and for most of that period was editor of the Irish People newspaper. He has been Ancient Order of Hibernians Freedom for all Ireland Chairman since 2018.
Several hundred people turned out at a Sinn Féin event in Scotstown in County Monaghan last Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of IRA legend, Óglach Séamus McElwain. The event celebrated a life dedicated to his community and to the achievement of a free, independent, and united Ireland. The following is a biography of his life, by Jim Doyle.
Séamus was born on April 1st 1960, the oldest of eight children in the townland of Knockacullion, beside the hamlet and townland of Knockatallon, near the village of Scotstown in the north of County Monaghan.
At the age of 14, he took his first steps towards becoming involved in Republicanism when he joined Na Fianna Éireann. Two years later, he turned down an opportunity to study in the United States and joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA), stating, “no one will ever be able to accuse me of running away.”
He became Officer Commanding of the IRA in County Fermanagh by the age of 19.
On February 5th 1980, off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) corporal Aubrey Abercrombieb was killed as he drove a tractor in the townland of Drumacabranagher, near Florencecourt.
Later that year, on September 23, off-duty Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Reserve Constable Ernest Johnston was killed outside his home in Rosslea.
On March 14th 1981, a detachment of the British Army surrounded a farmhouse near Roslea, containing Séamus and three other IRA members. Despite being armed with four rifles, including an Armalite, the IRA members surrendered and were arrested.
While on remand in Crumlin Road, he stood as a Republican candidate in the 1982 Free State General Election for the Cavan/Monaghan constituency, contesting a seat which had formerly been held by hunger strike martyr Kieran Doherty.
He was not elected but received 3,974 votes (6.84% of the vote).
In May 1982, he was convicted of murdering the RUC and UDR members, with the judge recommending he spend at least 30 years in prison.
On September 25th 1983, Séamus was involved in the Maze Prison escape, the largest break-out of prisoners in Europe since World War II and in British prison history.
Thirty-eight Republican prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijacked a prison meals lorry and smashed their way out of the prison.
After the escape, Seamus joined an IRA Active Service Unit operating in the border area between Counties Monaghan and Fermanagh.
The unit targeted police and military patrols with gun and bomb attacks while sleeping rough in barns and outhouses to avoid capture.
Séamus held a meeting with Pádraig McKearney and Jim Lynagh, members of the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade, in which they discussed forming a flying column aimed at destroying police stations to create IRA-controlled zones within the six counties.
This plan had been used to great effect during the War of Independence, especially in Cork with Tom Barry’s Flying Column.
However, this plan never materialised.
McKearney and Lynagh were later themselves killed in the Loughgall ambush.
On April 26, 1986, Séamus and another IRA member, Seán Lynch, were preparing to ambush a British Army patrol near Rosslea, County Fermanagh when they were ambushed themselves by a detachment from the Special Air Service Regiment. Both were wounded, but Lynch managed to crawl away.
A January 1993 inquest jury returned a verdict that Séamus had been unlawfully killed. The jury ruled that the soldiers had opened fire without giving him a chance to surrender, and that he was shot dead five minutes after being wounded.
The Director of Public Prosecutions requested a full report on the inquest from the RUC, but no one was prosecuted for Séamus’s death.
Séamus McElwain was buried in Scotstown, with his funeral attended by an estimated 3,000 people.
