DEBARY, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — A DeBary man was arrested and charged after allegedly snatching a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary from St. Ann Catholic Church and tossing it into the nearby woods last month.
The Volusia Sheriff’s office announced via Facebook on August 4 that they had arrested and charged John Mattern, 53, with criminal mischief at a place of worship, a third-degree felony, for stealing the statue of Our Blessed Mother and then leaving it in the woods.
Parishioners contacted the police after noticing that the statue was missing from the parish’s prayer garden and, upon closer inspection, realized it had been removed from its slab and thrown into the woods after Sunday evening Mass. After reviewing surveillance footage, the police identified Mattern committing the vandalism in broad daylight on July 23.
Several Catholic churches throughout the U.S. and indeed across the globe have experienced acts of vandalism in recent years.
Nationally, such attacks form part of a documented surge. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has tracked at least 416 incidents of vandalism, arson, or destruction at Catholic sites across 43 states and D.C. since May 2020. These range from beheaded statues and anti-Catholic graffiti to church fires.
In May, a vandal severed the head of Our Lord Jesus Christ from a picturesque statue depicting His Sacred Heart outside St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in East Islip, New York. The head was later discovered in nearby bushes.
READ: Statue desecrated at Long Island parish in latest act of church vandalism
Just this week in nearby Queens, an unidentified man smashed a statue of the Blessed Virgin at St. Rita Catholic Church in the borough’s Dutch Kills section. The Diocese of Brooklyn said this was the fourth act of vandalism at St. Rita’s Church since 2024.