Since last fall, six Brooklyn Roman Catholic Churches have been vandalized. Statues have been decapitated, broken and defaced, and in some instances hate mail has accompanied the desecrations.
Over the past few weeks, the Catholic League has contacted the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, asking the authorities to make these investigations a priority; the league also offered to assist in any way it could. Today Catholic League president William Donohue took another step:
“We are sending $500 each to St. Jerome’s, Our Lady of Refuge, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Fortunata, Apostles of Infinite Love Convent and St. Rita’s to help pay in the restoration of the vandalized statues. From what we have learned, these crimes were not the act of wayward delinquents, rather they have all the markings of deliberate malice. Indeed, the fact that they occurred in the same New York borough where white-collar miscreants recently insulted Catholics with hate speech masked as art, suggests that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well in Brooklyn.
“The message of hate that these crimes carry is unmistakable and that is why the Catholic League will do whatever it can to help bring about justice.”
