‘Total Destruction’: Raging Fire Destroys 17th Century Chilean Church, Investigation Underway

A devastating fire destroyed the San Francisco Church located in the Chilean city of Iquique; no casualties were reported.

The 17th-century church, mainly made of wood and the first Catholic church built in the South American country, was consumed by flame on Friday in an incident that remains under investigation.

“The flames had originated the previous day under the statue of a saint and were initially contained by the fire brigade,” Vatican News reports.

“They then resumed 24 hours later, for unknown reasons. The firefighting units, twelve in total, were unable to prevent the fire from completely consuming the wooden building.”

The church dates back to the Spanish Conquest and the arrival of the Franciscan order in Chile.

While authorities have not yet determined the cause of the blaze, attacks on Catholic churches in Chile have become commonplace in recent years.

In October 2020, leftists burned The Church of the Ascension and another church in Santiago, the Church of San Francisco de Borja. After waiting for the “all clear” from authorities to re-enter The Church of the Ascension, clergymen found much of what was left of the church vandalized by satanic graffiti.

Incendiary attacks on churches are by no means confined to Chile.

Just last week, the Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses in Trois-Rivières, a historic Catholic church in Quebec, Canada, suffered severe damage from a fire. Similar to the burning of the San Franciso Church in Chile, there were no casualties, and authorities initially remained hesitant to blame the blaze on arson.

As of nearly two weeks ago, The Christian Post reported that 110 churches had been damaged or destroyed by fire or vandalism since 2021. The fire at the San Franciso in Chile now brings that number to 111.