ABC7 Eyewitness News video screengrab
CV NEWS FEED // Since August, St. Francis de Sales Church in Los Angeles has survived two arson attempts in the past two months and undergone two other vandalism incidents, prompting police to begin a hate crime investigation.
According to KTLA 5, the most recent incident was on September 28, when a statue at the church’s entrance was vandalized. On September 20, the same statue was vandalized with a slang term for a child molester. On August 16, the rectory was set on fire, and on August 7, the statue’s base was set on fire.
Fox News 11 states that on August 16, when the rectory’s window was lit on fire, the church’s pastor, Father Mike Wakefield, was sleeping inside. He told Fox News that the window collapsed outside of the building and so it did not burn down the rectory.
Father Wakefield commented on the vandalism, saying, “It’s frustrating and unsettling to have the statue of the patron saint of the parish vandalized with paint three different times because the statue represents the Holy One, St. Francis De Sales, and who is also the patron of the parish.”
He added, “So in a sense, it’s also an assault on the parishioners of this parish.”
KTLA reports that a parishioner named Jessica said, “To see that this is something that is happening to our community is unsettling.”
A nearby resident, Sophie Jones, also expressed her disturbance at the graffiti.
“My daughter, who’s 10, she’s the one who first noticed it,” Jones said. “She said, ‘Mommy that’s awful!’ We’re not religious or anything, but the fact that they did that on a church is not okay.”
CatholicVote’s violence tracker states that there have been 63 attacks this year on Catholic churches, and 457 attacks since 2020.
