“Mommy, it’s trashed!” … Just one day after Holy Innocents Catholic School suffered shocking damage, the community gathered for a Mass of reparation, led by their bishop.
The photographs were shocking, in even in a time when destructive attacks against Catholic churches and schools have grown sadly commonplace. When Cyril Cruz, principal of Holy Angels Catholic School in Long Beach, California, arrived with her son to open up the hall for the daily school Mass on Monday morning, February 2, she found the door ajar, the lock broken. Hesitantly peering in, Cruz’s young son gasped, “Mommy, it’s trashed!”
The damage was spread throughout classrooms, the assembly hall, and the chapel. As the Long Beach Post News reported:
Statues of the Virgin Mary were smashed — hands and at least one head chopped off. Prayer books were dumped from bookshelves and strewn across the floor. The tabernacle had been ripped from its chapel, its doors pried partially open. Snack boxes, raided. Guitars and musical instruments, damaged. Curtains pulled down, cabinets torn from the walls. Audiovisual equipment was pillaged from closets and stacked on carts. The internet had been cut. Tiny peg dolls, used for teaching the youngest students, ransacked.
Long Beach police suspect a group of vandals caused the damage, perhaps in a burglary attempt that turned into a destructive spree. Multiple shoeprints and spilled cans of soda point to more than one individual. Besides the loss of school equipment, damages to religious statues alone will run into the tens of thousands; some religious articles, handmade by the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, who have served the school since its inception in 1958, can never be replaced.
The federal Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has announced it will open an investigation into the case.
“But can we still have Mass tomorrow?”
As police carried out their work and cleanup efforts began, school officials steered the students to take their anger and sadness to prayer. Director of Academics Kiernan Fiore told Mike Cisneros of Angelus News she organized a Rosary walk and worked with students to gain understanding.
“What happened here happens because there’s darkness inside someone that they’re carrying with them,” Fiore told students. “We don’t know who they are, what their story is, but you have the choice to not carry that kind of darkness, and instead to carry light. You can turn to Our Lord right now.”
As upsetting as the desecration was, the students of Holy Innocents — the only TK-through-12th grade parochial school in the Los Angeles Archdiocese — had one overriding concern. “Can we still have Mass tomorrow?” they asked.
The answer, miraculously, was yes.
On Tuesday morning, February 3, Angelus News reported, students, parents, staff, and community members gathered in the cleared space for a Mass of reparation, celebrated by Bishop Mark Trudeau. Trudeau, auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ San Pedro Pastoral Region, purified the altar and its surroundings with holy water before Mass.
In his sermon, Bishop Trudeau called for mercy:
“People who are broken tend to break things,” Trudeau said during the homily. “And healing is necessary. We can’t look at them or demonize them as terrible people.
“Because God sees us all as his children, worthy of redemption, worthy of mercy. So we call on our Blessed Mother to help us to be like her Son, bringing healing and forgiveness to all who need it.”
Principal Cyril Cruz says it’s the school’s aim to have the students see this experience as a way to grow in faith. “It’s like, truly embrace your cross,” Cruz said. “This is what we do at Holy Innocents.”
As of this writing, a gofundme organized for Holy Innocents School has raised almost 150% of its $100,000 goal.