A Greek Orthodox priest was beaten by a pair of Syrian asylum seekers in front of his own church.
The priest observed the migrants parking their motorcycles in the courtyard of the sanctuary of St. Nicholas in Patisia, a neighbourhood in Athens, on Friday afternoon, and went to confront them, newspaper Proto Thema reports.
After a heated exchange of words, the pair is said to have punched the priest and then fled. Police initially arrested two suspects and questioned them at the Agios Panteleimonas police station but let them go due to a lack of evidence.
Not long after the initial suspects were released, the perpetrators came to the police station and surrendered to the authorities.
The attack comes only months after the destruction of a stone cross in Lesbos which pro-migrant left-wing NGOs had previously demanded be removed, claiming that the cross promoted “hate” against migrants on the island, which hosts a large migrant camp.
In other European countries, anti-Christian violence by migrants has become a major issue, such as in Germany where Roman Catholic Archbishop Ludwig Schick made it a point last year to condemn violence directed at Christians and Christian converts by Islamic extremist migrants.
The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has also revealed that in 2017 there had been around 100 hate attacks against Christians in the country with at least 14 cases involving asylum seekers and refugees including the murder of a Christian convert.
In 2017, France also reported a huge surge in anti-Christian attacks with the Interior Ministry claiming anti-Christian incidents had increased by 245 per cent since 2008 — while racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic attacks had all fallen during the same period.
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