Canadian church goes up in flames for the third time in a week

A Franciscan Catholic church in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, which was sold to a developer, was a near total loss after a fire broke out on Thursday, but police are mum on a possible cause.

A massive fire reduced a Canadian church to ashes for the third time in less than a week.

Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses, a century-old Franciscan Catholic church in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, was a near total loss after a fire broke out on Thursday. The church, built in 1914, was not in use. It had been sold to developers, who planned to build 40 small apartments inside with additional units in the back of the building.

Nevertheless, the historic church blaze spread rapidly, and fire crews were not able to fully contain the flames, which resulted in extensive damage to the building, including one of its bell towers that collapsed.

Despite not being an active church, 11 Franciscan brothers were staying in a building connected to the back of the church but were able to get out in time before the blaze went out of control.

According to Father Guylain Prince, who oversees the local Franciscan congregation, the fire forced his 10 brothers from the scene.

“It was the only parish that was active (in the area) for more than 100 years by Franciscans, so it was we who built it. It contained frescoes by St. Francis, stained glass windows. It is a superb church, an extraordinary church,” Prince said, according to local media, which reported that the owner of the church is still “in shock” about what happened.

“We’re gonna sit down with the city authorities to see what we can do. This is not a standard building, it is a very special building,” said Georges Mouradian, the church’s new owner.

The official cause of the blaze is not fully known. Local police are mum on a possible cause.

In the span of a week, Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses is the third church to go up in flames in Canada. LifeSiteNews reported that one Catholic and Anglican church were destroyed.

The church burnings started in 2021 after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools.

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Jamil Jivani has urged support from his political opponents for a bill that would give stiffer penalties to arsonists caught burning churches down, saying the recent rash of destruction is a “very serious issue” that is a direct “attack” on families as well as “religious freedom in Canada.”

LifeSiteNews reported in August that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet said it will expand a multimillion-dollar fund geared toward documenting claims that hundreds of young children died and were clandestinely buried at now-closed residential schools, some of them run by the Catholic Church.

LifeSiteNews reported last week that Leah Gazan, backbencher MP from the New Democratic Party, brought forth a new bill that seeks to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system once operating in Canada was a “genocide.”

Canadian indigenous residential schools, run by the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, were set up by the federal government and were open from the late 19th century until 1996.

While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the unproved “mass graves” narrative has led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment since 2021.

Related Topics:#AnthonyMurdoch #LifeSiteNews ChurchFire NotreDameDesSeptAlegresses TroisRivieresQuebec

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Brown University shooter dead of apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound

Published on December 18, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Chris Wade

Rhode Island officials said the suspected gunman in the Brown University mass shooting has been found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, more than 50 miles away in a storage facility in southern New Hampshire.

The shooter was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, a 48-year-old Brown student and Portuguese national. Neves-Valente was found dead with a satchel containing two firearms inside in the storage facility, authorities said.

“He took his own life tonight,” Providence police chief Oscar Perez said at a press conference, noting that local, state and federal law officials spent days poring over video evidence, license plate data and hundreds of investigative tips in pursuit of the suspect.

Perez credited cooperation between federal state and local law enforcement officials, as well as the Providence community, which he said provided the video evidence needed to help authorities crack the case.

“The community stepped up,” he said. “It was all about groundwork, public assistance, interviews with individuals, and good old fashioned policing.”

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said the “person of interest” identified by private videos contacted authorities on Wednesday and provided information that led to his whereabouts.

“He blew the case right open, blew it open,” Neronha said. “That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to the photograph of that individual.”

“And that’s how these cases sometimes go,” he said. “You can feel like you’re not making a lot of progress. You can feel like you’re chasing leaves and they don’t work out. But the team keeps going.”

The discovery of the suspect’s body caps an intense six-day manhunt spanning several New England states, which put communities from Providence to southern New Hampshire on edge.

“We got him,” FBI special agent in charge for Boston Ted Docks said at Thursday night’s briefing. “Even though the suspect was found dead tonight our work is not done. There are many questions that need to be answered.”

He said the FBI deployed around 500 agents to assist local authorities in the investigation, in addition to offering a $50,000 reward. He says that officials are still looking into the suspect’s motive.

Two students were killed and nine others were injured in the Brown University shooting Saturday, which happened when an undetected gunman entered the Barus and Holley building on campus, where students were taking exams before the holiday break. Providence authorities briefly detained a person in the shooting earlier in the week, but then released them.

Investigators said they are also examining the possibility that the Brown case is connected to the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor in his hometown.

An unidentified gunman shot MIT professor Nuno Loureiro multiple times inside his home in Brookline, about 50 miles north of Providence, according to authorities. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday.

Leah Foley, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, was expected to hold a news briefing late Thursday night to discuss the connection with the MIT shooting.

Crime

Bondi Beach Survivor Says Cops Prevented Her From Fighting Back Against Terrorists

Published on December 17, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

A woman who survived the Hanukkah terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Australia said on Monday that police officers seemed less concerned about stopping the attack than they were about keeping her from fighting back.

A father and son of Pakistani descent opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40, with one being slain on the scene by police and the other wounded and taken into custody. Vanessa Miller told Erin Molan about being separated from her three-year-old daughter during Monday’s episode of the “Erin Molan Show.”

“I tried to grab one of their guns,” Miller said. “Another one grabbed me and said ‘no.’ These men, these police officers, they know who I am. I hope they are hearing this. You are weak. You could have saved so many more people’s lives. They were just standing there, listening and watching this all happen, holding me back.”

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“Two police officers,” Miller continued. “Where were the others? Not there. Nobody was there.”

New South Wales Minister of Police Yasmin Catley did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation about Miller’s comments.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed to enact further restrictions on guns in response to the attack at Bondi Beach, according to the Associated Press. The new restrictions would include a limit on how many firearms a person could own, more review of gun licenses, limiting the licenses to Australian citizens and “additional use of criminal intelligence” to determine if a license to own a firearm should be granted.

Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, reportedly went to the Philippines, where they received training prior to carrying out the Sunday attack, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Naveed Akram’s vehicle reportedly had homemade ISIS flags inside it.

Australia passed legislation that required owners of semi-automatic firearms and certain pump-action firearms to surrender them in a mandatory “buyback” following a 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, that killed 35 people and wounded 23 others. Despite the legislation, one of the gunmen who carried out the attack appeared to use a pump-action shotgun with an extended magazine.