What was claimed
A video shows a group of masked protesters setting fire to a Yorkshire church.
Our verdict
False. This clip actually shows an incident in Santiago de Querétaro in Mexico.
Video shows church attack in Mexico, not Yorkshire
A viral video showing a group of people wearing masks attacking a church has been shared with false claims it shows an incident in Yorkshire.
The video was actually filmed in Santiago de Querétaro in Mexico.
Several readers messaged us to ask us about the video, which has been shared thousands of times across X, Facebook, Instagram and Threads with captions including “masked protesters set fire to the entrance of a Yorkshire church in broad daylight”, and “a group of masked protestors walked up to a Yorkshire church and deliberately set fire to its entrance while hiding their faces”.
But this isn’t true.
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We traced the video to reports of an incident showing people damaging the doors of the Church of San Francisco in Santiago de Querétaro in Mexico in March 2026, following demonstrations on International Women’s Day.
A spokesperson for the diocese told local media that the doors hadn’t sustained serious damage and that fire retardant had been placed there as a preventative measure.
We could not find any evidence of protesters recently attempting to set fire to any churches in Yorkshire, although there was an arson attack on a church in the village of Riccall in 2022.
Our toolkit can help you spot whether videos you see circulating on social media are trustworthy or whether you might not be getting the full picture.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this video shows an incident in Mexico, not Yorkshire.