From the Denver Post: Griego: Little church’s St. Francis statue a target for vandals
By Tina Griego

Someone’s got it out for St. Francis. Or just the little church named in his honor. Or the church as a whole. Who knows? Maybe just fiberglass statues depicting humble saints who turn their backs on wealth to live in poverty.

It’s hard to know the mind of a vandal. This doesn’t keep Father John Kalabokes from trying.

Not quite five months ago, someone stole the bolted statue of St. Francis from its concrete base outside the St. Francis of Assisi Polish National Catholic Church. You might remember this story. The little church sits just below Leetsdale Avenue at South Jersey Street, across from a McDonald’s. Father John speculated the thief or thieves wrapped a chain around the 5-foot-tall statue, secured the other end to a vehicle and hit the gas.

This is a poor church, not affiliated with the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver as it has its differences — small but significant — with Roman Catholicism.

When the news got out, people sent in donations, and about two months after the statue was stolen, the church dedicated a new one: St. Francis, gleaming white, a blue bird perched on his hand.

And now this.

“St. Francis was attacked again,” Father John tells me in an e-mail.

I call him in disbelief. “What?”

The statue wasn’t stolen this time, he says. This time, someone or someones went after it with some kind of tool until the head smashed and the face came off.

“This was brutal,” he says, sounding weary. “Somebody has real issues. Whoever did it just beat on the statue, just beat on the head. The whole face came off in one piece.”

When Father John first discovered it Wednesday, he called a television reporter and a short piece aired. Afterward, he wondered whether it was the right thing to do. He wonders, even now, whether more publicity will just gratify the culprit. I don’t try to persuade him one way or another. As I said, it’s hard to know the mind of a vandal. Maybe, Father John decides, more publicity will prompt someone to come forward.

“Let’s face it,” he says. “These kind of crimes only get solved because someone comes forward, a witness or someone who knows something.”

It might not be the same person as last time, I say.

“There’s no way of knowing,” he says. “We suspect it’s an ongoing crime. It’s hard to accept that there would be more than one person out there who would do this.”

He tells me something he didn’t reveal before. About a week and a half after the statue was stolen, someone left a note on its concrete base. The letters were cut out of newspaper like a movie-version of a ransom note and said something like: ” ‘You will be struck,’ ” Father John said. “The police have it now.

“I’m a little discouraged and depressed,” he says. “I don’t understand the joy someone would get out of that. It’s a hateful action. It’s an act against the faithful.”

On Sunday, most of the congregation got its first look at the headless St. Francis. It’s a startling sight. Church members are angered and baffled and they compare it to recent attacks on statues at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden.

After Mass, Father John talks to the congregation. “I’m sure most of you, if not all of you, noticed that St. Francis was attacked again,” he starts, and the woman next to me starts to cry. He says he can’t figure out why someone would do this and that he no longer thinks this is a teenage prank. He says the good news, such as it is, is the statue might be reparable, but the church needs to figure out a way to protect it.

Someone out there is troubled, he says, so pray for him or her. Good came from bad last time, he tells them. It can again.

You may contact St. Francis Parish via their website to express your prayers and support.