EAST NEW YORK — A person was seen on video surveillance footage defacing doors and a statue of Jesus sometime between 6:47 and 6:51 a.m. on July 6 at St. Fortunata Parish.
The New York Police Department responded after Charlie de Pena, the parish’s maintenance supervisor, discovered the damage at about 7 a.m., seemingly just a few moments after the attacks.
The video surveillance footage shows a person, clad in a hoody and blue-plaid jacket or shirt, using some sort of pointed object to carve the words “Death to Pedos” on two sets of side doors and on the front doors of the church.
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Images from the surveillance video dismayed the parish staff.
“I don’t think it’s really anger against the person,” said Sister Loretta Florio, the parish’s pastoral assistant. “It’s more like shock and fear. Is it a real threat? Was it just a disturbed person? Is it somebody who was abused?”
The parish is in the 2600 block of Linden Boulevard in the East New York neighborhood of eastern Brooklyn.
No arrests were reported as of July 7, said Det. Arthur Tsui, a spokesman in the NYPD’s office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information.
Det. Tsui added that an investigation was underway, but it was too early to say whether the case was being investigated as vandalism, a hate crime, or some other offense.
The suspect, whose face was concealed by the gray hood, also scrawled “Death to Pedos” on a shipping container in the parking lot, followed by cuts on the side doors which open to the sacristy.
Before damaging the front doors, the person stopped at the statue next to the convent and angrily pounded a pointed object at the Sacred Heart motif on Jesus’s chest.
Maria Jorge, the administrative assistant, said the statue is quite old, and it shows its age, but the strikes on the Sacred Heart were clearly new.
“It was obvious he had a weapon,” she said. “We don’t know if it was a knife, but that’s what it looked like. And with the camera we could hear the noise, too, when he was poking the Sacred Heart.”
Jorge said the staff is relieved that the church doors were locked because de Pena was inside preparing the space for the day’s activities.
“Thank God the church was still closed, because Charlie was inside, there by himself,” Jorge said. “Imagine if the door was open, what could have happened?
“And what if he comes back? We don’t know. We don’t know what to do because we have to open the church for the people. But we hope that he doesn’t show up.”
But de Pena said no noise was heard from inside the church, probably because he had just turned on the air conditioning.
Although the strikes on the statue were audible on the video footage, the three sisters in the convent also heard nothing, Sister Loretta said. Their community is the Sisters of St. John the Baptist.
After attacking the statue, the person was shown jumping over a gated fence and proceeding up the stairs to scratch the message into the metal surfaces of the front doors.
Next, the suspect moves up and down the stairs and appears to be using a phone to photograph the damage before fleeing the scene.
Nellie Johnson, a longtime parishioner and former trustee, said she saw the damage when she went to Mass on the morning of July 6.
“It’s disturbing that something like this happens,” she said on July 7.
Johnson described how she joined the parish as a young adult in 1969, when the front doors were made of rich mahogany. They were subsequently replaced with the metal doors festooned with crosses.
Johnson said she has followed similar attacks in recent years on other churches in the Diocese of Brooklyn, where parishioners routinely forgive the perpetrators.
“This is where we serve God,” Johnson continued. “And the idea that somebody had the nerve or the evil spirit to desecrate the church made me angry. But then it made me sad for these people.”
Johnson said it might be hard to reverse the damage, but not impossible.
“If they sand it, it might damage the appearance of the doors,” she said. “I’m
hoping something can be done to keep the configuration of the doors — something so beautiful.”
But, she noted, other parishes were quick to repair damage, and she expected St. Fortunata would do likewise.
“There’s a saying in my area that the devil is a liar,” Johnson said. “But we are not going to let him get ahead of us. Christ is in the lead.