CALGARY, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) — A flourishing Catholic church in western Canada was forced to spend thousands of dollars to erect a barbed-wire fence around the outside of the church after vandals repeatedly tried to set fire to the area where the tabernacle is located.

Over the past two weeks, St. Patrick Church in Calgary saw vandals set fire to the exterior of the church in the exact spot where the tabernacle is located. Fortunately, the blaze did not take hold, but the brick exterior did suffer some surface damage.

The church is equipped with a camera system and local authorities were contacted about the vandalism.

However, as a result of the latest vandals’ attempt to set fire to the church, the parish decided to take matters into their own hands and invested thousands in installing a barbed-wire fence around the exterior to ward off future attacks.

The church had been targeted a few times before by vandals; however, this time, the parish priest had enough, and with the support of the parish, decided it was time to act.

Father Vincent Ha Tuan, the assistant pastor there, spoke with LifeSiteNews about the incident, confirming that vandals did try to set fire to the tabernacle area. Because of this, he said, the fence was erected.

He told LifeSiteNews that vandals had “set fire” to the outside to “try” and cause damage, adding it was “sad” to see this happen, but the church had no choice but to act.

Incidents of vandalism affecting Catholic churches in Canada, and indeed worldwide, have been on the rise in recent years.

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools.

As a result of the claims, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.

In October 2024, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the now former federal government of Justin Trudeau for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children.