CNA Staff, Oct 22, 2020 / 19:01 pm
Following recent attacks on three churches in Chile, the bishops of Paraguay, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Argentina expressed their closeness to and support of the Church in Chile.
The Church of the Assumption and Saint Francis Borgia church in Santiago were destroyed by arson Oct. 18. Vandals smashed windows, tagged, and tried to burn down Saint Francis of Assisi Church in La Serena Oct. 19.
The attacks came as demonstrators across the country marked the one-year anniversary of large anti-government protests that took place across Chile last year, and shortly before the Oct. 25 plebiscite on writing a new constitution to replace that written in 1980 under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Bishop Adalberto Martínez Flores of Villarrica del Espiritu Santo, president of the Paraguayan bishops' conference, expressed the bishops' "closeness and ecclesial communion" to the Church in Chile.