ICC Note:

According to reports, all the statues at the 14 Stations of the Cross at a church in Andhra Pradesh, India were vandalized on Sunday morning. A group of vandals attacked the church on Sunday morning while the priests were away conducting a mass service. The Crosses at the church were untouched by the vandals. Please pray for this church and for the repair of the damage done by the vandals. 

5/28/2014 India (Asia News) – A group of vandals desecrated all the statues at the 14 Stations of the Cross in the Cristu Jyothi ashram in Warangal (Andhra Pradesh), the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) told Asia News.

The incident occurred last Sunday morning, between 8 and 10 am, when the priests were away from the ashram, to celebrate Mass.

“The GCIC is anguished at the desecration of all the 14 Stations,” GCIC president Sajan George told Asia News.

“The vandals,” he said, “shattered the 5-feet cement statues of the soldiers at every station of the cross, but they did not damage any of the crosses”.

Such “an “act of vandalism deeply offends the religious sentiments” of the community, he lamented, and is the “work of evil perpetrators.”

Mgr Alfonso Beretta, the diocese’s bishop emeritus and a missionary from the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), inaugurated the Cristu Jyothi on 3 April 1993.

Since then, priests from the Catholic Congregation of the Holy Spirit have run the community.

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