St. Matthew church, school hit hard by vandals
By Ambria Hammel | June 4, 2009 | The Catholic Sun
Parishioners and staff at St. Matthew Parish and School plan to take the biblical command to “love their enemy” and “pray for those who persecute you” to heart next week.
They’ll take part in a bilingual prayer service at 7 p.m. June 9 to rededicate the sacred places targeted during a late night vandalism spree June 2. The church and four school classrooms were damaged.
Parishioners will join in a candlelit eucharistic procession in which Fr. Raymond Ritari, pastor, will bless the neighborhood and pray for their attackers.
Sadly, parishioners say, it was likely three of their neighbors who committed the crime late June 2 or early June 3. Phoenix police are still pursuing investigative leads.
“They were looking for money and didn’t get what they wanted,” Fr. Ritari said of three transient men who interrupted the Spanish prayer group meeting June 2. “Some people are a little more aggressive, unhappy that they don’t get what they want.”
Staff and parishioners suspect the vandalism — which included three broken classroom windows, a broken classroom door, stolen electronics and equipment, and a busted stained glass window, blood on the tabernacle and defecation of the baptistery — was an act of retaliation.
“I was really appalled by the whole thing,” Fr. Ritari said. The property has been damaged in the past, but never inside the church.
Rosita Espericueta, parish administrator, agreed.
“This morning the reaction was very sad,” Espericueta said, just hours after the incident. “It’s extremely sad that we can’t keep something that’s sacred.”
It all started around 8:30 p.m. when the three men entered the church and immediately made a scene in front of some 200 people, according to witnesses. One sat on a wall in front of the pews and had to be escorted to a seat.
He reportedly started asking people for money in English. The prayer group leaders said that’s not uncommon at the meeting.
The other men played with the church doors. One man confronted one of the parish’s teenagers gathered outside. That’s when prayer group leaders asked the men to leave.
The trio reappeared as late as 10:30 p.m. as Rosa Bustas and a few others routinely locked up, including the church gate.
“They were very aggressive with my husband,” Rosa Bustas, a team coordinator of the Spanish prayer group, said.
The men demanded that her husband help them and tried to start a fight in the parking lot.
Members of the prayer group suspect the three men were the vandals because the same baseball cap seen on one of the men leaving that night was found at the scene.
The vandals apparently hopped the church gate and stood on top of a recycling can to break the bottom of the St. Katharine Drexel stained glass window with a rock. The window is hidden from street view by a utility room.
“This was a violation,” Fr. Ritari said, “of the sacred places within our churches, where we celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism and where we find peace and silence as we come to pray and be with the risen Christ in the reserved Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle.”
Phoenix police estimated the damage at more than $25,000. Parishioners pitched in to purchase the original window some 15 years ago.
Once inside the church, the vandals defecated in the baptistery and left blood on the side of the tabernacle.
Fr. Ritari said a professional company spent three hours thoroughly sanitizing the baptistery and the filtration system.
The vandals also gathered objects, including the monstrance, in an apparent attempt to steal it.
They then used a candlestick holder from the sacristy to break windows in the seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms on the school’s west side to steal equipment. They also broke the kindergarten door’s window to gain access, which Espericueta was hit the hardest. The vandals left the candlestick on a windowsill outside the fourth-grade classroom on the east side after breaking a window there as well.
Not only was the house of God damaged, Fr. Ritari said, but the minds and hearts of the “living stones” of St. Matthew were also violated.
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Rebuilding St. Matthew Parish
St. Matthew Parish and School was heavily vandalized June 2 or 3. Cleanup work was immediately underway, but one of the church’s stained glass windows and four classroom windows are still in need of repair.
The parish welcomes donations to help cover the insurance deductible and replace various electronics taken from the classrooms.
To make a donation, call the office (602) 258-1789.
Fr. Raymond Ritari, pastor, will lead a rededication of the baptistery and tabernacle 7 p.m. June 9 at the church, 320 N. 20th Dr. That will be followed by a candlelit eucharistic procession through the neighborhood to pray for their attackers.
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Updated June 9 with additional details.
