A string of attacks on Catholic shrines has damaged pews, statues. Police doubt the incidents are related.<\/p>\n
They usually come under the shroud of darkness, late at night when no one is around, and approach the shrines as assailants.<\/p>\n
They leave behind relatively minor physical damage — hands dislodged from a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, or statues toppled into pools. They defaced walls in one instance and burned a church pew in another.<\/p>\n
But the insult runs deep, scarring the souls of the faithful.<\/p>\n
“It’s become an issue,” said Father Richard Kennedy, pastor of St. Barbara’s Catholic Church in Santa Ana, one of three Orange County parishes that have endured a string of apparently unrelated vandalism attacks in recent weeks. “Different [parishioners] come up and say they want to pay for surveillance and stuff like that. They get pretty upset.”<\/p>\n
Vandals have struck at St. Callistus Church in Garden Grove, causing minor damage by setting fire to a pew, and at St. Barbara’s and Our Lady of La Vang in western Santa Ana, where icons and statues have been damaged or stolen.<\/p>\n