In Canada, wooden RCC church burned down due to arson

Passersby watch the Saint-Simon Church burning on Monday morning. Photo: CBC News

In the Canadian province of New Brunswick, the wooden Catholic church of Saint Simon was destroyed in a deliberate arson. Police and fire services are investigating the destruction of the region's largest wooden church as a suspicious incident, reports the CBC News.

The alarm sounded in the community of Saint-Simon on Monday at around 3:30 a.m. Caraquet fire chief Luc Dugas reported that motion sensors had detected an unauthorized presence inside the building as early as 3:20. Rescuers arrived at the scene, but the fire had already engulfed the sacristy and quickly spread to the roof of the wooden structure.

Firefighters were unable to save the building due to the rapid spread of flames through the roof timbers. The heat from the fire damaged four neighboring houses, but none of the local residents were injured. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Sylvain Bergeron confirmed that law enforcement is treating the incident as deliberate arson.

The burned church was built more than a century ago, between 1910 and 1920, to a design by architect Nazer Dugas. Caraquet Mayor Bernard Thériault called the destruction of the shrine a tragedy for the entire community. The population of the village of Saint-Simon has declined from 900 to 600 people in recent years, but residents continued to raise funds to keep the church in good condition.

Local resident Monica Albert Léger said she was awakened in the night by the wail of sirens. "The flames had already reached the steeple, and there was nothing we could do," Léger shared. "This is very close to each of us. The church is our heart, our lungs, the center of our village. We have just lost a huge part of it."

Mayor Bernard Thériault emphasized that local residents have already expressed the need to build a new church. This incident is the second case of a church being destroyed by fire in the northeast of the region in the past ten years, following the fire in Bas-Caraquet in 2018.

As the UOJ reported, in the United States, a historic RCC church sold to Muslims was set on fire for the third time.

Read also