Madrid, Spain, Jan 21, 2020 / 14:58 pm
The Association of Christian Lawyers in Spain filed a complaint last week with the Prosecutor's Office against the newly appointed director of the Institute for Women and Equal Opportunity, Beatriz Gimeno. The group says Gimeno committed a hate crime by authoring a 2013 article in Eldiario.es justifying the burning of churches.
Hundreds of churches were burned and priests were killed in Spain during the 1930s, as the Church faced a period of violent persecution.
Gimeno referenced church burnings in her article, saying, "In those countries where the Church (or churches) are on an equal footing with everyone else's freedoms, no one feels the need to burn them. But that's not our case. The deep loathing that many people feel here for the Catholic Church has been earned."
"Here religion has never been a personal option that is lived freely and peacefully, but it has always been an imposition that falls upon us from above in all the structures of the State," she said.