Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Mem­bers of the Ro­man Catholic faith are said to be still trau­ma­tised by Sat­ur­day’s des­e­cra­tion of the St Fran­cis RC Church’s Pas­toral Cen­tre in Bel­mont.

Two men van­dalised and dam­aged re­li­gious stat­ues and the cen­tre’s out­er win­dows and doors dur­ing an un­war­rant­ed at­tack on Sat­ur­day.

De­spite this, mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion can­celled on­ly the Sat­ur­day evening mass which was sched­uled to be held short­ly af­ter the at­tack and still held the two sched­uled ser­vices yes­ter­day.

On Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, the two men, dressed in colour­ful wear which looked like clothes worn by that of an­oth­er re­li­gious body in the coun­try, al­leged­ly en­tered the premis­es around 4 o’clock, as some ear­ly ar­riv­ing parish­ioners had al­ready gath­ered for 5 pm mass and be­gan in­flict­ing dam­age to prop­er­ty.

Footage from a se­cu­ri­ty cam­era shows both men walk­ing in­to the church’s car park. One man, dressed in yel­low and car­ry­ing a coloured flag, ap­peared to at­tack a stat­ue of the Vir­gin Mary with the flag short­ly be­fore re­join­ing the oth­er man, who was dressed in red and ap­peared to be pray­ing over the com­pound. The man with the flag al­so sub­se­quent­ly threw out a stat­ue of St Bernadette, al­so from the grot­to area where the stat­ue of the Vir­gin Mary was, and broke sev­er­al win­dows and the door to the cen­tre.

Ac­cord­ing to a Catholic TT news re­port, wit­ness­es said the man car­ry­ing the flag­pole was speak­ing in­co­her­ent­ly as he moved about the church­yard. Af­ter leav­ing, the men re­port­ed­ly dam­aged cars parked in the vicin­i­ty of the church. The re­port said, “Six win­dows and the glass pan­el door of the main en­trance, a stat­ue of St Bernadette, and Mary lo­cat­ed in the grot­to were dam­aged.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Act­ing Arch­bish­op Esau Joseph told Guardian Me­dia the Catholic Church “to­tal­ly” con­demned the des­e­cra­tion.

“They shouldn’t re­al­ly van­dalise any place of wor­ship. That’s to­tal dis­re­spect to God and the per­son’s faith,” Mon­sign­or Joseph said.

He said the act in­fringed on the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of wor­ship.

Al­so con­tact­ed, Sec­re­tary of the St Fran­cis RC Restora­tion Fundrais­ing Com­mit­tee, Lin­da Stephen, told Guardian Me­dia the dam­age was es­ti­mat­ed to be in the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars. She not­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of the dam­age was in­flict­ed on the pas­toral cen­tre, a small­er build­ing used for ser­vice while the church is be­ing re­stored.

Stephen said the trau­ma ex­tend­ed to the en­tire parish, es­pe­cial­ly those who were present dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

“The parish­ioners are a lit­tle shak­en but they are sort of bind­ing to­geth­er and sup­port­ing one an­oth­er through it. It’s im­por­tant for me to say they are al­so pray­ing for the per­pe­tra­tors and pray­ing for for­give­ness (from God) for them and pray­ing for strength for them­selves to car­ry on,” she said.

One parish­ioner, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, yes­ter­day de­scribed the in­ci­dent to Guardian Me­dia as “mad­ness,” not­ing it had com­plete­ly trau­ma­tised her.

De­spite Sat­ur­day’s in­ci­dent, ser­vice was held yes­ter­day af­ter parish­ioners cleaned up the dam­age once po­lice has con­clud­ed gath­er­ing their ev­i­dence.

In De­cem­ber, the church launched a fund­ing dri­ve to raise mon­ey to re­store the church in­fra­struc­ture. The church has been des­ig­nat­ed a Na­tion­al Her­itage Site.

“The peo­ple are com­mit­ted to the project of the open­ing of that church and that this will not de­ter them,” Stephen said yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Sheri­don Hill yes­ter­day con­firmed both men were ar­rest­ed af­ter the in­ci­dent. He said af­ter in­ter­ro­ga­tion, one of the men was sent to the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal im­me­di­ate­ly for ob­ser­va­tion while the oth­er re­mains in po­lice cus­tody. He told Guardian Me­dia the men are ex­pect­ed to be charged once the po­lice have con­clud­ed eval­u­at­ing the val­ue of the dam­age done.