By Kenneth J. Souza
Anchor Staff
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Brazen acts of vandalism against a New Bedford church last month are being treated as a potential hate crime by local authorities.
Father Hugo Cardenas, IVE, pastor of St. Kilian’s Parish, filed an incident report December 10 with the New Bedford Police Department after discovering graffiti spray-painted on the church building and two broken windows in the adjacent rectory.
Father Cardenas said he found two messages spray-painted on the church — the first, a racial slur that has since been removed; the second, a Nazi swastika covering the side door to the church with the cryptic message “we’re back” underneath it.
“I know breaking a window and spray-painting a church might not sound like something very important when we have so many other problems in New Bedford with prostitution and drugs, but it’s considered a hate crime,” Father Cardenas told The Anchor.
In addition to the graffiti spray-painted in white, Father Cardenas said the storm door window of the side rectory entrance facing the church was also broken, as was his second-floor bedroom window.
Repeated calls to the detective handling the investigation at the New Bedford Police Department were not returned.
Although there has been little progress in the investigation to date, Father Cardenas suspects the culprit to be a teen-ager from the neighborhood he has encountered before.
“One day I was coming home from exercising and I saw a guy who previously had been verbally harassing me walking towards the rectory with two friends,” he said. “That same day I got into my bedroom and I noticed it felt cold and I saw glass all over the place — in my bed and on the carpet in my bedroom. Then I found a rock on the floor. It’s not too difficult to conclude that it could have been done by the same guy, because he was looking at me when I came home and he previously harassed me.”
Father Cardenas described the young man as being between 15 and 18 years old and said he previously asked police to remove him from church property for trespassing, so they are aware of him.
“It seems this guy is someone that is known in the community,” he said. “A member of our choir thinks it’s the same guy who tried to rob him.
“I want them to catch this guy and arrest him and I want him to pay for the damages.”
Although concerned about further acts of violence against the church, Father Cardenas said he hasn’t seen this person since December 10 and there haven’t been any other incidents thus far.
“I have only been here a year and a half, and this is the first time anything like this has happened to the church,” he said. “I read that from 2008 to 2009 there have been more hate crimes against Christians than ever before. Before 2008 most of the hate crimes were committed against Jews and after 9/11 a lot were focused against the Muslims.”
While the Nazi symbol and racial slur might suggest a potential hate crime in this case, Father Cardenas prefers to believe this is just an isolated incident of one troubled teen-ager acting out — and something that is becoming all-too-common of late in New Bedford.
“I just think he thinks the Nazi swastika is cool and the message ‘we’re back’ doesn’t mean anything,” Father Cardenas said. “I don’t want to seem negative about New Bedford, but this is a war zone. There are a lot of good people here, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if someone comes into the church and breaks a crucifix or throws a Molotov cocktail one day.”
Father Cardenas said a lack of faith and trust in God and the breakdown of the family unit are two key reasons why teen-agers resort to violent acts of vandalism.
“I think a lot of our young people don’t have a mother and father to look up to and teach them values,” he said. “They don’t have the faith foundations to know better. For some of these kids, too much free time is hard to handle. It also makes them feel better about themselves by doing something like this — they break a window or vandalize something and they think they’ve defeated you.”
But Father Cardenas doesn’t seem at all defeated by the blatant attack against his church.
In fact, although the more offensive racial slur was immediately cleaned off the building, he’s decided to keep the Nazi swastika in place for the time being as a not-too-subtle reminder of how those who turn away from God can go astray.
He also kept the rock that smashed through his bedroom window.
“I’m keeping it as a souvenir,” he said.