Boston Police are investigating whether the burning of a Virgin Mary statue outside a Dorchester church was a hate crime, a department spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.
A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was set ablaze outside St. Peter’s Parish Saturday night. The Boston Police joint investigation includes the civil rights violations unit, the arson unit and district detectives, BPD spokesman Sgt. Detective John Boyle said on Tuesday.
The civil rights unit is “on board to investigate whether or not there are any bias indicators in this crime,” Boyle said.
Officers responding to the scene Saturday night saw that a Virgin Mary statue had been set on fire.
Someone had lit plastic flowers on fire, which were in the hands of the Virgin Mary statue, according to members of the Boston Fire Department Fire Investigation Unit. That caused the statue’s face and upper body to get burned, according to police.
A spokesman for the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts on Tuesday said he was pleased to hear the civil rights violations unit is part of the investigation.
“I’m delighted to hear Boston Police are taking this seriously,” said Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle.
“We don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but given the current climate in the country with so many incidents, we need to take each one very seriously,” he said.
Doyle cited other attacks on Catholic churches in the U.S. over the last week, including someone defacing a Virgin Mary statue in Queens, N.Y., on Friday.
There have been at least 17 acts of vandalism directed against Catholic churches in Massachusetts since 2016, he said.
“Even before the current controversies engulfed us, the number of incidents has increased in the last few years,” Doyle said. “There seems to be a pattern of increasing intensity of these incidents.”
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston said in a statement of the Dorchester incident, “We have confidence in law enforcement to investigate the matter. I am not going to surmise a reason behind the vandalism and would caution anyone else to wait until we know more.
“… Whoever is responsible for the desecration of the Holy Mother’s statue is clearly a troubled soul,” he said. “Mary represents all that is good and pure in our world. We have confidence in local law enforcement to investigate this matter. We pray for the person or persons responsible.”
At 7 p.m. Wednesday, there will be a rosary prayer service at the statue led by the Rev. John Currie. The statue will be cleaned later this week.
For the Dorchester incident, Boston Police said that anyone with information should contact detectives at 617-343-4335.
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Virgin Mary statue fire: Boston Police investigate whether it was hate crime - Boston Herald
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