{"id":178498,"date":"2026-03-28T22:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T22:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178498\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T22:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T22:44:12","slug":"mamdani-denounces-anti-catholic-vandalism-in-new-york-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178498\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani denounces anti-Catholic vandalism in New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> spoke out against two recent incidents of vandalism at Catholic churches in Queens as the New York City Police Department<\/a> investigates the mid-March events as hate crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m deeply troubled by reports of vandalism targeting two Catholic churches in Far Rockaway. Everyone in our city deserves to practice their faith freely, without fear or intimidation,\u201d Mamdani wrote on X<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s words come nearly a week after the latest incident of vandalism, as the NYPD investigates a March 21 spray-painting incident that took place at St. Rita\u2019s Roman Catholic Church. The first incident occurred several weeks ago on March 14 at St. Gertrude\u2019s Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

At St. Rita\u2019s Roman Catholic Church, an unknown vandal suspect spray-painted<\/a> a statue of St. Francis of Assisi outside the place of worship blue. The NYPD told the Washington Examiner that per the police report filed on Tuesday, the suspect \u201calso spray painted the word \u2018PAGAN\u2019 on the floor in front of the statue.\u201d<\/p>\n

At St. Gertrude\u2019s on March 14, an unknown suspect broke a statue of the Virgin Mary on the church\u2019s property. <\/p>\n

For both incidents in Far Rockaway, the NYPD said, \u201cThere are no arrests, and the investigation remains ongoing by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.\u201d<\/p>\n

THREE HOUSE DEMOCRATS BUCK JEFFRIES AND BACK JOHNSON\u2019S 60-DAY DHS FUNDING PATCH<\/a><\/p>\n

The second NYPD investigation and Mamdani\u2019s statement come just days before Palm Sunday as the Catholic parishes move into the Holy Week leading up to Easter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stand in solidarity with these parishes and their communities as they recover,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke out against two recent incidents of vandalism at Catholic churches in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4840,10087,9,24,55,54,56,103,27540,82],"class_list":["post-178498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-catholic-church","tag-catholicism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-nypd","tag-roman-catholic-church","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}