NEW JERSEY
The Record
BY JUSTO BAUTISTA
STAFF WRITER
The Record
PALISADES PARK — Parishioners at a church on East Brinkerhoff Avenue were up in arms on Sunday after someone beheaded the statute of their beloved patron saint.
“This is horrible,” said an outraged parishioner.
“There’s no head. Is nothing sacred anymore?” said the parishioner referring to the incident at his church and the recent spate of vandalism in Bergen County, where synagogues in Hackensack and Maywood were defaced by anti-Semitic graffiti and a synagogue in Rutherford was firebombed, an incident that resulted in the arrests of two Lodi men, one of whom was charged with nine counts of attempted murder. …
And in November, an unemployed cook in Morris County was charged with desecration of a venerated object and criminal mischief for allegedly smashing a memorial to victims of clergy sex abuse. Police said a sledgehammer was used to wreck the memorial — a circular black millstone outside St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Mendham and installed to call attention to the abuse of local boys by a former St. Joseph’s pastor from Paterson.
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