The Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh, has expressed distress at another attack on a Catholic church in his diocese. A fire at the Church of St Peter the Rock, at Stoneyford, near Lisburn, Co Antrim, was the fourth attack on a Catholic church in a fortnight.
"My heart goes out to the parishioners for whom the church was a second home," Dr Walsh said. "They will have the sympathy and the prayers of very many people, of all right-minded and God-fearing people, who will bed aghast at this further affront to Almighty God - for that is what an attack on a church is.
"We must all pray for a change of heart in those who carry out, and those who inspire, such despicable acts.
According to the RUC, the alarm was raised at about 12.30 a.m. yesterday. Furniture had been piled around the altar, and set alight, and the church was seriously damaged.
At the weekend a device was hurled through the window of Woodgrange Orange Hall in Downpatrick, Co Down.
A week earlier fires damaged St McNissis's Catholic Church in Randalstown, Co Antrim, and the nearby St Comgall's Church, also, Catholic, on Dublin Road.
The deputy leader of the Alliance Party and Lisburn councillor, Mr Seamus Close, condemned the attack.