Michelle Loubon

Church wor­ship­pers yes­ter­day cried foul as loot­ing and wan­ton de­struc­tion con­tin­ued at the con­tro­ver­sial in­com­plete Light­house of Our Lord Je­sus Christ Church. Some mem­bers of the near­by com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day said they be­lieved the wreck­ing of the church was linked to pol­i­tics. One man felt the loot­ing stemmed from the view the church was linked to the PNM Gov­ern­ment. Mar­tin Fer­min held strong­ly to that view.

Fer­min and oth­er mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion said they were sad­dened at the de­struc­tion. There has been van­dal­ism at the church which led to the col­lapse of the dome on Wednes­day. A vis­i­tor de­scribed the build­ing as sim­i­lar to "a snap­shot from war-torn Beiruit." There is spec­u­la­tion the struc­ture has so far cost about $30 mil­lion. Fer­min said he was fur­ther ag­griev­ed that mem­bers of the Chris­t­ian faith were not speak­ing out on be­half of the church.

He said: "This church be­longs to the Body of Christ. I find no one from oth­er Chris­t­ian church­es say­ing van­dal­ism is wrong. "What is hap­pen­ing is sad. It is even more sad that no­body is re­al­ly say­ing any­thing about it." Quizzed on who is the right­ful own­er, he said: "It is the Lord's." His sen­ti­ments were echoed by oth­ers, in­clud­ing evan­ge­list Shirlain Fer­min and prophet­ess Cindy Blanc. Fer­min said she had to warn "those evil-do­ers that de­struc­tion will come up­on their house­holds." Blanc, who re­placed Ju­liana Pe­na as the prophet­ess, said: "Since I saw what was go­ing on there, I have been cry­ing."

More In­fo

Yes­ter­day, loot­ers con­tin­ued reck­less pil­fer­ing. One loot­er said: "I see noth­ing wrong. The church does not be­long to any­one. No­body is com­ing for­ward to claim it." His gold teeth glint­ed in the ear­ly morn­ing sun­light, when he added: "The po­lice came and said there is no one com­ing for­ward to claim the church. They parked the car and they just watched. "It is no scene. Noth­ing wrong with what we're do­ing. The church start cor­rupt from day one." He said loot­ers were com­ing from as far as San Juan. An­oth­er loot­er said he came out of prison about a year ago. He said to date he has helped him­self to about $20,000 worth of ma­te­r­i­al. An­oth­er young man said: "We not do­ing any­thing wrong. The church start­ed with cor­rup­tion. We didn't break any law." One man said he was plan­ning to fix his home with the ma­te­r­i­al.