Carfin Grotto. Photo: Wikipedia 
Suspected arsonists targeted Scotland’s national shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes in the latest in a series of incidents at Catholic sites.
The fire caused damage to Carfin Grotto, which has added to the financial strain on the shrine that welcomed in excess of 70,000 pilgrims a year before the Covid crisis.
John P Mallon, the co-founder of Sancta Familia Media, which handles press inquiries on the shrine’s behalf, expressed that “It has saddened us all at Carfin as we approach our centenary next year of the opening of the Grotto on October 1, 2022.
“Covid has reduced a lot of our annual intake by reducing pilgrimages so we are already on a tight budget before this attack.
“The fire was quite fierce and set deliberately by the piling of items together and setting them alight,” he said.
Although Catholics are a minority in Scotland, comprising just 16% of the total population, the Catholic Parliamentary Office of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland claimed in 2019 that Catholics were “disproportionately targeted in terms of religiously aggravated offending”.
