St. Joan of Chantal, who along with St. Francis of Sale, founded the Order of the Visitation in 1610.
Some impious individuals desecrated several statues on the monastic grounds of Bay Ridge’s Visitation Academy [8902 Ridge Blvd] on Wednesday night.
The Christian religious images, which were positioned to appear in prayer around a figure of the Virgin Mary, had been knocked off their bases. The vandals also decapitated a statue of a lamb.
Two of the sculptures wound up being dragged away by the sacrilegious simpletons, reports the Brooklyn Paper.
From Brooklyn Paper:
“Of course I’m hurt,” said the monastery’s superior, Mother Pauline, who found out about the vandalism from a worshipper attending Mass. “By the time I got out there, the police were already here.”
Cops say the weight of the stone figurines means several people were likely involved in the crime, which comes a month into the Lenten season.
Investigators suspect the sacrilege on the grounds of the Catholic girls’ school was intended as a prank, not as any kind of anti-religious gesture.
As police scoured the scene and gathered evidence — including the lamb’s severed head — they recovered a glass candle and a bottle of Guinness that will be checked for fingerprints and DNA evidence, NYPD sources said.
City Councilman Vincent Gentile, who represents Bay Ridge, called the acts despicable and pledged his assistance to the monastery, which is part of the mission of the Sisters of the Visitation – a Catholic religious order that goes back to 17th Century France, in restoring the sacrosanct works of art.
The mother superior, who told reporters that the monastery and all-girls school has never had problems with vandalism before, would not say if they were planning on pressing charges against the perpetrators.
“We’ll let the police handle it,” she said.
