The sentence in this case is obviously excessive and politically motivated, but it is still an infraction, however trivial.
If it's just a guy wandering around with a smartphone, someone at the church can tell him to gtfo and that's as far as it goes. I doubt anyone would say in that case that the church is in the wrong by doing so. But by filming it and posting it online, you can't expect hacker priests to take the law into their own hands and DDoS him, so it now becomes a problem for the state, if the church decides to seek recourse (which reasonable people in a country without an unhealthy relationship between the church and government probably wouldn't do, but it is still in their rights to try). In this case, instead of scaring the crap out of him with a police visit or a serious official warning in the mail (which is the sensible thing to do in most cases), the state abused the law with an excessive sentence.
It could be as harmless as some local/regional buffoon wanting to "make an example", or it could be more sinister as part of a wider scaremongering and polarization campaign. I'm leaning towards the former here, but would qualify it by saying that the former was itself likely created in some part by the latter.
Edit:
Oh, reread the article, guy hasn't even been sentenced yet. Pfft, why are people worked up about some hotdog police chief saying he wants 5 years? I mean he shouldn't have been charged at all like I said, but you can't extrapolate too far off one police spokesman's statement that they would actually get that sentence.