(LifeSiteNews) — Vandalism has struck yet another Catholic church in California, this time in Oakland.
St. Columba Catholic Church has become the latest victim in an ongoing wave of attacks targeting Catholic churches.
Father Aidan McAleenan discovered the damage as he was leaving the church after celebrating Tuesday Mass, KRON4 reports. Vandals had ripped from the lawn crosses symbolizing homicide victims in Oakland and threw them into the street. A statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe was also torn down from the church’s wall.
“I am really at a loss to why someone would do something like this,” said Fr. McAleenan in a Facebook Live video.
“I just walked out of the church to discover that someone has desecrated our crosses that have been in place to witness to the homicides of Oakland. They have smashed them … they are all over the road. I don’t know who would do something like this.”
The parish, predominantly African American, sports a “Black Lives Matter” sign on the building and another reading “Racism is a sin” on the lawn. It also puts up LGBT “pride” flags every June, a symbol contradicting Church teaching on homosexuality.
McAleenan later discovered that the vandals had also destroyed a memorial fountain dedicated to six students from University of California, Berkeley who were killed in a balcony collapse in 2015.
“They have destroyed the fountain in front of the church too … this is a fountain we put up to remember the six kids at Berkeley … and a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe is pulled off the wall. It’s really shocking.”
As recently as this past February, another Catholic building was vandalized in Long Beach, California. Holy Innocents Catholic School had its school assembly hall, chapel, and classrooms ransacked, with smashed statues and tabernacles strewn on the floor. One of the worst desecrations was to a statue of Our Lady, which had been in the school since 1958 and was valued at $40,000.