desecration

noun

1. An act of disrespect or impiety towards something considered sacred.

   “It seemed a desecration and an unhallowed thing to touch that sleeping image of the live man by my side.”

   “In the same year as the Furness objection, sadder tidings befell St Pancras Priory at Lewes, in East Sussex. Despite it having the distinction of being the earliest Cluniac monastery in Great Britain, petitions to prevent the Brighton Lewes & Hastings Railway from imposing on its site with its Lewes line failed. The line was approved and, as if as an act of deliberate desecration and assertion of the railways' power, passed over the site of the high altar.”