Security footage shows man threatening to kill nun in a Brooklyn church

Jerrid Farnam, 32, has been charged with several felonies in connection with a violent vandalism at Subiaco Abbey in Subiaco, Arkansas, on Jan. 5, 2023. He said he was about to begin breaking open the tabernacle where the consecrated bread is kept, but something stopped him in his tracks: a statue of the Virgin Mary. / Credit: Logan County Sheriff’s Office / Suzanne Stratford YouTube screen shot

Boston, Mass., Feb 6, 2023 / 13:55 pm (CNA).

In early January, a man entered a Benedictine monastery in Arkansas and began smashing the altar with a sledgehammer.

He was about to begin breaking open the tabernacle where the consecrated bread is kept, but something stopped him in his tracks: a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Jerrid Farnam, 32, of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, was arrested for the crimes of property damage and theft committed at Subiaco Abbey in Subiaco, Arkansas, and is currently incarcerated awaiting trial.

Sheriff Jason Massey of the Logan County Sheriff’s Office told CNA that when they brought the suspect in he confessed to the crime. But, Farnam told the police, after he looked up and saw a statue of Mary, he couldn’t continue to break open the tabernacle as he had planned to do.

“He decided he just couldn’t do it,” Massey said. “I think he felt it was wrong at that point.”

Subiaco Abbey had reported that on Jan. 5, a man using “a regular hammer and sledgehammer/axe” began destroying the abbey’s marble altar by smashing it in different places. Founded in 1878, Subiaco is home to a community of 39 Benedictine monks.

The suspect left a gaping hole in the top of the altar and broke open stones that contain relics, the abbey said. Two reliquaries — small, brass-colored boxes that each contained three relics of saints from more than 1,500 years ago — were stolen, according to the Logan County Sheriff’s Office.

Father Elijah Owens, OSB, the abbot of the monastery, told CNA in January that the relics contained in one of the reliquaries were those of St. Boniface, St. Tiberius, and St. Benedict of Nursia.

The other reliquary contained the relics of St. Tiberius, St. Marcellus, and St. Justina, Owens said.

A video of the damage can be seen below.

The abbey said in its press release that the man approached the tabernacle and removed a cross located on top as well as the tabernacle’s veil before being “interrupted.”

Farnam was arrested the same day and three of the relics were found in his truck.

At the time, the reliquary containing the relics of St. Tiberius, St. Marcellus, and St. Justina was still missing. The sheriff’s office later discovered them in a trash can in Farnam’s father’s house. 

Farnam gave the reliquary to his father, who, unaware of the nature of the objects, threw the contents of the container in the trash, while keeping the container for himself, the sheriff said.

“Luckily there was no food or anything on them. They were found in great condition,” he added.

Massey said that one of the seven offenses Farnam was charged with was theft of property, a Class B felony, which is the highest classification of a felony in the state, he said.

“You can’t put a price on those relics. They’re 1,500 years old,” he said.

Farnam thought that Jesus’ bones were in the altar and that God was telling him to remove the bones, Massey told CNA. He added that Farnam has a history of substance abuse and was intoxicated during his arrest. 

The abbey is under repairs, and a portable altar will now be used until repairs are made, according to the abbey’s press release.

[…]

Denver Newsroom, Jul 18, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- When the coronavirus pandemic necessitated widespread shutdowns, Catholic parishes were among those to feel the financial pinch almost immediately. No people in the pews meant no money in the collection basket. Mass after Mass, weekend after weekend, that loss added up.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado is one such parish whose already-precarious financial situation was thrown in jeopardy by the pandemic.

To keep paying his small staff, Fr. Joseph Lajoie applied for a Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan through the Small Business Administration. The loans were meant to support the essential needs of small businesses and nonprofits affected by coronavirus shutdowns.
 

An article from the Associated Press published last week criticized the “U.S. Roman Catholic Church” for reportedly accepting between $1.4-$3.5 billion work of PPP loans. In fact, there is no single entity that is the U.S. Roman Catholic Church. Rather, each parish operates as its own small nonprofit, and weekly donations help to employ the priest, along with the employees who maintain the parish and its ministries.

Sacred Heart Parish has three part-time employees, and a three-ring binder in which it keeps track of its 500-some registered families.

“In some ways our parish is very archaic,” Fr. Jajoie told CNA.

He dreams of someday hiring a maintenance manager.

“I have a 100 year-old church without a maintenance guy,” he noted.

Though it is located in Denver’s gentrifying, “hipster” neighborhood of RiNo (River North), Lajoie said Sacred Heart is a small, poor parish with no online donation portal and has been “limping along” through the pandemic.

When Lajoie applied for the loans, the priest had no grand visions for what he would do with the money.

The needs of the parish are pretty “bare bones,” and Lajoie said he used the loan to keep paying the salaries of his employees – a secretary, a bookkeeper, and a director of religious education – whose incomes help support their families. 

Masses are back at the parish now, but at a lower capacity to accommodate social distancing.

“Right now, because of the reduced Mass schedule that we have, we’re just under about 50% of our normal parish income. So we’re limping along, but it could be a lot worse,” Lajoie said.

Fr. Lajoie said by applying for the federal loan, he was not trying to pad his bottom line. He was simply trying to keep his employees, well, employed.

“I wanted to do my best to support these employees, and I would have done it even without the loan, even to the detriment of the parish, because I feel at least we showed them some gratitude” for their work, Lajoie said. “Because being here as a pastor for a year and dealing with the shutdown, I don’t know what I would do (without them). They’re definitely quite essential to the needs of this parish.”

Lajoie said he hoped people understand that parishes are small businesses with employees who pay taxes and need to keep their jobs, and that they are not part of huge corporations.

“Parishes have employees, who are working, who need jobs. As far as my parish is concerned, we are using this money to help some people who are part of families. We are using this money the same way that a for-profit business is using money, which also helps their bottom line. As far as I’m concerned, what we’re doing…it’s to benefit working people, who themselves pay taxes,” he said. “We’re using this to help people the same way that a for-profit helps their employees,” he said.

“I think that more parishes can be trusted to actually care about people in all of this, than some companies out there who are willing to…cut jobs, because they’re not making a profit anymore. I mean, the church will still exist if they’re not making a profit. If the church isn’t making a profit at a certain point, the buildings themselves will have to close because they can’t keep the lights on.”

The parish of Christ the King in Oklahoma City is more than three times the size of Sacred Heart. The parish has 1,800 families, and a school that educates 520 children. Between full-time and part-time employees, Fr. Rick Stansberry said the parish and school employ 78 people.

When the pandemic shut down Masses at the parish, Stansberry said one of the members of his finance committee encouraged him to apply for the PPP loan so that the parish wouldn’t have to fire anyone.

“Once everything was shut down, our collection dropped pretty quick, since people weren’t coming to church,” Stansberry told CNA.
“In our parish, a lot of people are tied into the oil and gas industry, and lots of people were losing jobs. And so all of a sudden they found themselves without jobs, having to feed their families. Some were not able to pay tuition. Obviously they weren’t able to tithe to the church,” he said.

“I didn’t want to have to lay people off and contribute to the problem. And some of our part-time (employees) are more vulnerable in the sense that they really depended on the jobs that they had to eat. I didn’t want to lay people off,” Stansberry said.

The part-time employees “were the ones that were the most grateful that we got the loan.”

The loans granted to parishes as well as other nonprofits and small businesses through the PPP loan could be used for salaries, utilities, rent and other necessities. Stansberry said his parish loan was used “100% for salaries.”

With the recent phased reopenings of Masses, Stansberry said that donations have “kind of stabilized” again, but that the financial situation of the parish and its school is a “moving target” right now, especially with all of the uncertainty surrounding the quickly approaching school year.

The school is working on a 40-page document detailing reopening plans with social distancing and masks and frequent disinfection of the school, which itself “has added thousands of dollars to our janitorial bill.”

But if something changes and reopening becomes impossible, it puts the future of many Catholic schools – and their employees – in jeopardy, Stansberry noted.

“If we can’t reopen in person, I think we’re going to lose a lot of Catholic schools, because parents are saying, ‘Well, why am I going to pay tuition to do virtual (Catholic) school when I can do the public one for free?’”

Stansberry said his parish also has some important ministries, such as those that feed the homeless, or help needy families with food assistance, that would have been cut had the parish not qualified for the PPP loan.

And the priest said he wanted to keep his employees paid and his ministries operational.

“By having this money to pay salaries, we did not have to cut back on the mobile meals program or helping to provide food for a needy family. That would have all had to have been cut too. The people that I think that are being critical (about parishes receiving loans) don’t really know how a church works.”

[…]

Pittsburgh, Pa., Mar 17, 2020 / 03:55 pm (CNA).- Fr. Nick Vaskov wanted to do something. He wanted to invoke God’s protection against the pandemic of the coronavirus, and call for the protection of the saints. He wanted to give witness to faith. So he decided to have a procession.

The procession was to take place after a Mass in Pittsburgh, where Vaskov is diocesan director of shrines. Both procession and Mass would call for divine protection from plagues, epidemics, and contagious diseases. And there would be a lot of relics.

The priest scheduled everything for March 22. And then on March 16, the diocese suspended public Masses, in response to the guidance of public health officials. And gatherings of more than just a few people were discouraged.

So Fr. Vaskov’s plans had to change.

The Mass will still take place on March 22nd, but now it will be livestreamed, and Catholics encouraged to watch online.

The procession will still take place too. Catholics are invited to stand on the sidewalk along the procession route, keeping a safe distance from each other. Pittsburgh priests will carry the Blessed Sacrament, along with relics from the True Cross, St. Rocco, and St. Rosalia, through a Pittsburgh neighborhood. They’ll pray, and invite onlookers to do the same.

“The celebration of Holy Mass, obviously it’s a participation in the liturgy of heaven. So whether we are present or not, as the body of Christ, it has a powerful effect for the intentions that we bring there – that we want to be transformed and made new and healed, certainly in a time of a health crisis for people’s health and protection,” Vaskov told CNA.

“[The] procession … [is] bringing God into the world and bringing people hope and faith and trust. We have a great opportunity to do that,” he told CNA.

Vaskov said the idea for the Mass and procession started with the large collection of relics at St. Anthony’s Chapel in Pittsburgh.  Among the collection are relics from intercessors against contagious diseases, like Saints Rocco and Rosalia. Those saints will be important intercessors during the time of the coronavirus pandemic, the priest said.

“We have that opportunity here since we have the relics of many saints that are invoked in times of plague and epidemic … We just have a great opportunity on our hands to be able to do something, show people that we do trust in God in moments like this to heal and to protect,” he told CNA.

The coronavirus, COVID-19, has infected nearly 190,000 people worldwide, and killed almost 8,000. Pennsylvania’s Department of Health reported that there have been 76 cases of the viruses in the state.

As many dioceses have closed their churches in response to the pandemic, Vaskov said there is need to be creative ways to involve people in prayer and spiritual practices, even if those are digital opportunities.

The priest told a story about Saint Charles Borromeo who, during a plague in 1500s Italy, would set up Mass on the street corners and people would pray through the windows of their apartments.

“That was a creative way to allow people to draw near to the Lord. We look now to digital ways to do that, and maybe other ways,” he said.

“Just because the church is closed doesn’t mean that we’re sitting here doing nothing, we’re going to do all the more.

“If nothing [else], this is going to be our own prayer for our people during this time. So praying with and for each other is going to be such an important part of this.”

Vaskov said the Mass for protection, streamed online, will not replace the reception of the Eucharist, but it will still be a powerful experience of prayer and unity. He told CNA he hopes the event will bring peace to people who feel stress or anxiety over the virus.

“It doesn’t replace for them what it means to go to Mass and to receive the Eucharist, but it certainly is a help, during challenging days, for so many people with anxiety and worry,” he said.

“[This event is a way] to have interactions with people digitally or opportunities for people to ask questions. People are worried and anxious and they look to the Church, they look to saints,” he said.

[…]