Graffiti attacks on San Diego-area churches being investigated as hate crimes

September 28, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Denver Newsroom, Sep 28, 2020 / 04:31 pm (CNA).- Two Eastern Catholic churches in San Diego County suffered graffiti vandalism attacks over the weekend, and while authorities are treating the incidents as connected, they have not yet determined the perpetrators’ motives.

St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon, California on Sept. 25 was defaced with graffiti depicting “pentagrams, upside down crosses, white power, swastikas,” as well as slogans such as “Biden 2020,” and “BLM” (Black Lives Matter).

The cathedral is the seat of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle of San Diego.

The same evening, Our Mother of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, also in El Cajon, was similarly attacked, with the pastor discovering spray-painted swastikas on an exterior wall of the church the next day.

Our Mother of Perpetual Help is a Syriac Catholic church, part of the Syriac Eparchy of Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark.

The sheriff’s department has not officially announced any suspects, but is investigating the incidents as hate crimes.

Monsignor Emad Hanna Al-Shaikh, pastor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, told CNA he alerted all the relevant authorities when he discovered the vandalism, and later painted over the graffiti.

Msgr. Al-Shaikh said he strongly suspects the same perpetrators who hit St. Peter cathedral also defaced his church, though he does not yet have proof. The churches are located three miles apart.

He said he does not know of any reason why someone would vandalize his church, and does not know who might have carried out the attack.

“We’re friends with everybody, we love everybody, and we’re at peace with everybody,” he said.

Sargent Mike Hettinger, a detective investigating the incidents, told CNA that the Sheriff's Department does currently have some "good leads" in the case, including surveillance video, tips from the community, and physical evidence collected that they do not yet want to make public.

The department does believe the two crimes are related, he said. There appear to have been five perpetrators, and based on the video evidence they appeared to be juveniles, he said.

The motive for the crimes remains unclear, especially since the messages of the graffiti— which included, for example, both swastikas and "BLM"— appear to be at odds with each other.

There were protests taking place in downtown San Diego that evening, so the graffiti could be related to that, he said, but investigators are not yet certain on that point.

The vandalism comes amid a spate of similar incidents at Catholic churches that has lasted for months. Earlier last week a man burned pews in an arson attack in a Florida Catholic church, and a man with a baseball bat damaged a crucifix and several doors at a Texas seminary.

Last week a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was destroyed in a Texas cathedral.

Also last week, a parish in Midvale, Utah, saw back-to-back attacks. St. Therese of the Child Jesus Catholic Church had its namesake statue beheaded followed by burglary on subsequent nights.

A historic church built by St. Junipero Serra was burned in California this summer, in a fire being investigated as arson. A Florida man was arrested for setting flame to a parish church in the Orlando diocese.

Fires have been started and statues of Christ, Mary, and saints have been beheaded or destroyed at parishes across the country, while in California numerous public statues of St. Junipero Serra have been torn down, defaced, and destroyed.

While some attacks on statues have been committed by large groups with clear political affiliations, the perpetrators of other acts have not been identified.

A poll conducted at the end of August by RealClear Opinion Research in partnership with EWTN News found that 83 percent of Catholic likely voters are concerned about attacks on churches in recent months.

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California abbey’s consulting firm takes ‘desperately needed’ approach to fundraising

January 9, 2024 Catholic News Agency 0
A view from in St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California. / Credit: St. Michael’s Abbey

CNA Staff, Jan 9, 2024 / 10:30 am (CNA).

An abbey in California launched a consulting and fundraising firm that its leaders say is helping “serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history.”

The Abbey Group was launched at St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California, in 2020 after the priests saw major success with a capital campaign to build a new monastery there. 

The abbey, of the Norbertine order, launched the campaign in 2006 but it stalled after “a decade of fits and starts,” Gregory Clark, the strategic planning director of the Abbey Group, told CNA. The abbey’s leadership consequently assembled “a small, internal team of confreres to rethink the project,” hiring R. Shane Giblin in the process. 

Within short order the abbey had secured over $150 million in commitments, more than doubling earlier projections of $60 million. The team also found “creative ways to immediately pay off all their bank debt in the same year it opened.”

St. Michael’s Abbey Father Prior Chrysostom Baer told CNA the project had transformed to the point that it was “no longer about what the abbey needed but rather the opportunity the benefactors had to do something of great consequence for themselves and the Church.” 

“This not only fit with our calling as religious, but it was simply more effective,” Baer said. 

The major success of that campaign led people to seek out both Giblin and the Norbertine Fathers “asking for strategic counsel on how to move forward with their own projects,” Clark said. 

Giblin and the abbey’s Father Justin Ramos “began offering pro bono counsel for about 18 months until they saw there was a real need in the Church that wasn’t being met.” The Abbey Group was launched as a result. 

St. Michael's Abbey in Orange County, California. Credit: St. Michael's Abbey
St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California. Credit: St. Michael’s Abbey

‘Not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago’

St. Norbert established the Canons Regular of Prémontré in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s task was in part to revitalize both clergy and lay faithful that had become dissolute in the faith at the time. 

The Abbey Group “exists to help serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history — not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago,” Clark told CNA. 

The initiative “provides strategic counsel and direction to faithful Catholic religious communities, educational institutions, and apostolates around the world,” Clark said, with a focus on institutions that have “ambitious apostolic endeavors and strong leadership but are in need of the financial and temporal resources to accomplish their objectives.”

The Abbey Group team has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy Catholic projects, though it does not engage in any formal marketing. The group intentionally eschews online marketing, avoiding the common business practice to “saturate the internet with messages” of self-promotion. 

Giblin, now serving as CEO and co-founder of the Abbey Group, said this is intentional. “All of our clients come to us through unsolicited word of mouth,” he said. “So our reputation is all we have — if we don’t do good work we won’t exist — and we shouldn’t exist.”

The group has already developed “a queue of clients” — it takes on just four projects at any one time, vigorously vetting each proposal for its fidelity to the Catholic Church as well as the leadership guiding the project in question.

The majority of the staff are drawn from the laity, and the Norbertine Fathers offer “spiritual guidance” to the team and play a role in the governance of the organization.

Altogether the effort is directed toward “providing worthy Catholic projects with the strategy and resources they need to fulfill what God is calling them to accomplish,” Clark said. 

Giblin said he was fortunate to have had “a front-row seat to see the way Father Abbot and Father Justin were able to work with a special group of people from all over the country to courageously support this unique project.” 

“I saw people grow spiritually through this process and I realized this was just as much an opportunity for them as it was for the abbey,” he said. “It is an authentically Catholic approach to fundraising — one that is desperately needed in our Church during this moment in her history.”

Co-founder of the Abbey Group Father Ramos, meanwhile, said the endeavor’s work “is rooted inexorably in faith and charity, and in Christ.” 

“We’re aiding in discernment,” Ramos said, “to allow generous souls to participate in the renewing of the Church.”

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