Waltham Church Statue Found Broken, Beheaded

WALTHAM, MA — A statue of Jesus was decapitated this weekend at St. Charles Borromeo Church, about a block from Gilmore Playground.

The church reported the vandalism to police on May 2, and now police are asking for the public's help in finding who is responsible.

"We don't have any leads as of yet," Sgt. Det. Stephen McArthy said. "We do have a detective assigned for the case, and we are open to any information that anyone may have that could help. We do rely on information from the neighborhood and citizens."

It's one of more than 67 acts of vandalism reported at Catholic churches across the country in the past year, according to the Committee for Religious liberty, a nonprofit in Washington DC.

In the commonwealth, acts of vandalism at Catholic Churches quadrupled between 2016 and 2020, according to Catholic Action League of Massachusetts Executive Director C.J. Doyle. He said when his organization began to track them in 2016, it was about one instance a year, and then it went up to about four a year, until 2020. In the past year there have been 15 reported acts of vandalism across the state, he said.

"There's been a dramatic escalation in the number of these incidents, which are by the way hate crimes, in Massachusetts," Doyle said in a phone interview. "The trend here is very disturbing."

In the past year a statue at St. Peter's church in Dorchester was burned, expensive stain glass was smashed in Fall River, St. Teresa in Dorchester has had to clean up after six incidents, Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Weymouth church to name a few he said.

Doyle is calling on local and state authorities to take the acts of vandalism seriously, but he said he's dismayed that there have been few - if any - arrests.

"We have seen a number of incidents of mayhem all around the country, it seems to be coming from people who may view the Catholic Church as an adversary," he said. "But no one has been arrested so we don't know the motives."