It’s been a full year since the members of the St. Theresa Point First Nation watched heartbroken as their beloved church burned to the ground on Easter Sunday.

In light of the unmarked graves found at residential school sites across Canada this spring and summer, different groups have sought apologies and atonement from the Catholic Church for its contribution to residential schools.

Could this most troubling of summers for the Catholic Church across Canada spark its resurgence as a vital participant in the country’s public life? Call me a sun-addled optimist, but I carry a conviction it can so long as we avoid thinking of a phoenix rising from ashes and instead heed the Gospel call to commit ourselves to the long, hard, patient work of building Christ’s Church.

First it was grief, then it was anger, then it was destruction.

While the rash of arsons and acts of vandalism perpetrated on churches across Canada has lightened considerably compared to the volume of incidents that occurred between late June and mid-July, it’s not gone away.

With 20 churches across Canada — mostly Catholic — torched by mid-July in the fallout of the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools, the silence from political leaders has been deafening, says Deacon Andrew Bennett.

The Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) has condemned the rash of church fires and vandalism that has taken place across Canada, particularly in the west, since the discovery of graves at former residential schools.

VANCOUVER -- Five suspicious fires have destroyed or damaged churches on British Columbia First Nations’ land in the weeks following the discovery of an unmarked gravesite at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in late May and mid-June on the Cowessess First Nation in southern Saskatchewan.

Another church in a First Nations community has been destroyed by fire.

Amidst the rubble left by the fire that consumed St. Theresa Point Catholic Church on Easter Sunday laid a picture of St. Kateri Tekakwitha almost completely intact.

Just hours after Easter Sunday Mass, residents of St. Theresa Point First Nation in Manitoba could only watch and cry as their Catholic church burned to the ground.

ST. ISIDORE, ONT. -- When the historic church in St. Isidore, built in 1879, was destroyed by fire after a lightning storm in 2016, the community vowed off that the spiritual centre of the small French-Canadian community in eastern Ontario would rise again.

NANTES, France -- A Rwandan is facing up to 10 years in prison after he confessed to deliberately setting fire to the city's Gothic cathedral.

NANTES, France -- French police have opened an arson investigation into a fire at a Gothic cathedral in Nantes.

LOS ANGELES -- The fire that ravaged Mission San Gabriel Arcangel church in the predawn hours of July 11 left behind a haunting scene.