With Church Vandalism on the Rise, Here's How to Heal

Andre Sicard was studying when he first saw the pictures. His church’s beloved statue of St. Therese was off its pedestal and lying, beheaded, on the ground. Memories from childhood worship services flashed through his mind. At Christmas, at Easter, at his First Communion, that statue had watched over him with its white, marble eyes. "It had always been there. It's what you saw when you came in and out. To see it broken . . . my stomach just dropped," said Sicard, who is in Washington, D.C., studying to be a priest for the Diocese of Salt Lake City and still calls St. Therese of the Child Jesus Catholic Church in Midvale, Utah, his home parish.