SW News: Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan, Lisa McClain, along with 19 Congress members, have called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to take action against attacks on Catholic churches across the United States.

In a letter describing the attacks, the lawmakers demanded immediate intervention from the Department of Justice. In the letter, the Michigan representative along with others stated that religious freedom is under threat in the US. “Since May of 2020, the United StatesConference of Catholic Bishops has counted at least one hundred sixty hate crimes against theCatholic Church across thirty-seven states,” they pointed out. The letter continued, “as a result, millions of Christians are under assault for merely exercising their constitutional right to freely practice their religion.”

They wrote, “just this year, the altar at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Brooklyn, New York was destroyed. Vandals stole the church’s historic tabernacle that held the Eucharist, the body of Christ in the Catholic faith, before proceeding to wantonly decapitate the statues of angels and desecrate the Eucharist on the altar”.

In the letter, they also pointed out several other instances of anti-Catholic violence like “arson, destruction of Church property, and the defacing of gravestones with swastikas and anti-Catholic slurs.” Expressing concern over the growing number of violence, the lawmakers wondered if the DOJ would respond to the crimes committed against the holy sites in the US.

The letter concluded by asking Garland and DOJ whether they would take action “against anti-Catholic crimes and defend the constitutional rights of Catholic Americans."

"Catholicism is under violent attack in this country, and the spineless Department of Justice refuses to do anything about it," McClain told Fox News Digital in an interview.