It’s sort of death by a thousand cuts, or probably more accurately put, so many cases here and there that it causes us to take less notice.

The issue is church vandalism, particularly against the Catholic Church and particularly Virgin Mary statues (though no figure is spared).

The recent spate has ratcheted up vandalism against holy icons for years and peaked, in a way, last weekend, when a man jumped onto the High Altar at St. Peter’s Basilica itself and knocked over treasured candelabras.

It wasn’t monumental damage (several thousand dollars), but the altar is located just under the basilica’s famous stone canopy, designed by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which was recently restored. The suspect is from Romania and a Vatican spokesman said the incident involved a person with a “serious mental disability, who has been detained by the Vatican Police and then placed at the disposal of the Italian authorities.”

A similar incident (a man throwing candelabra off the main altar) occurred in 2019

And who could forget the 1972 attack on Michelangelo’s Pieta (now behind protective glass)?

Mental issues are apparent in many such cases, but certainly not all, and perhaps not the majority; anyway, what officials call “mental” or psychological might also have been simple demonism (which is so often camouflaged by the vernacular of science).

Such events can underscore another thing: coming events.

In Rwanda, apparitions of the Blessed Mother began immediately following what Bishop Aloys Bigirumwami of Nyundo described as a “diabolical fury directed against the Mother of God between 1979 and 1981. The wild iconoclasts removed and broke all the statues which were in the churches and at the crossroads throughout the whole of Rwanda.”

Those apparitions predicted dire times ahead, and twelve years later, 800,000 to a million were killed in ten short months of incredible bloodletting (a daily rate that even exceeds the Nazi holocaust) as Hutus waged genocide against competing Tutsis.

Wild-eyed? In New York, a man caused damage after first kissing the statue.

At any rate, St. Peter’s was, as stated, just the cap of a wild ride as vandals have desecrated, damaged, painted, or outright destroyed religious statuary across North America and parts of Europe.

In one recent two-year period (2020-2022), 366 incidents occurred across forty-three states and the District of Columbia.

Last year seemed to eclipse previous years, with headlines such as:

Vandal damages century-old statue at Brooklyn Catholic church, leaving parishioners ‘shocked’

Pittsburgh church searching for suspect after statue vandalized

Kansas City vandals behead Virgin Mary statue, desecrate church’s prayer garden

Sherman Oaks church repeatedly vandalized in possible hate crimes

Search for suspect who destroyed religious statue outside church in Harrison

Jesus statue at a New Orleans church, vandalized

In California, statues of St. Junípero Serra were desecrated, including one outside Mission San Rafael which was covered in red paint and toppled, leaving just the saint’s feet in place.
A man crashed his van into a church in the Diocese of Orlando, Florida, and set the interior ablaze.
In New York, a statue of Jesus was knocked to the ground at Immaculate Conception Church, and stained glass windows were broken at the National Shrine of St. John Neumann in Philadelphia.

There have also been incidents involving the desecration of the Eucharist and damage to church properties through broken windows and graffiti, which have occurred in various states including Texas, Washington, D.C., and Oregon. In some cases, the damage was significant, with entire structures like stained glass windows being shattered or church interiors being defiled. (Check out this list from 2023.)

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty, and Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, issued the following statement:

“These incidents of vandalism have ranged from the tragic to the obscene, from the transparent to the inexplicable. There remains much we do not know about this phenomenon, but at a minimum, they underscore that our society is in sore need of God’s Grace.”

[resources: Where the Cross Stands and The Final Hour]