Attacks on Church Part of Rise in Hate Crimes

On the day he turned 44, Father Michael Mahoney was expecting Latino parishioners to gather early in the morning at the rectory of St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church to serenade him with the traditional “las mananitas.”

But instead of hearing the lilting music of the happy birthday song, he was jarred awake on that recent May morning by loud pounding on the door and the gruff voice of a fellow Franciscan priest. “Get up!” shouted Father Lawrence Caruso. “The church has been destroyed again!”

What Caruso had just discovered at the brick church in the Silver Lake district was fresh splotches of red, green and black paint streaked across the large image of Jesus on the cross above the main entrance.

The paint and graffiti was the fifth incident against the church in four months. The vandalism belongs to a growing number of “crimes of hate” perpetrated against religious, ethnic, racial and minority groups in the state.

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp on Friday said hate crimes “may be up by at least 20% in the last couple of years” and are increasing in every region of California.

Van de Kamp, receiving the final report of the state Commission on Racial, Ethnic, Religious and Minority Violence at a meeting in the Venice Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, pressed for $2 million to fund a human relations commission in every county and underwrite local and statewide collection of data on hate crimes.

In Los Angeles County, the Human Relations Commission--in existence since 1944--reported 378 hate crimes motivated by race, religion or sexual orientation in 1989--the highest total in 10 years.

Crimes against religious groups escalated from 111 in 1988 to 125 in 1989--also a record high, the commission reported. Graffiti was the most common form of religious hate crime in the county, it said.

Jews were the targets of the vast majority of religiously motivated hate crimes during the 1980s. The first non-Jewish religious hate crime did not occur until 1985. But in 1989, the commission continued, seven different religious groups were victimized, including seven attacks on Catholic organizations.

The priests and parishioners at the 1,800-family St. Francis Church have been put on notice that vandalism at their church will continue as long as parishioners continue their weekly praying and marching in front of a neighboring medical clinic that performs abortions.

Although a dozen or so St. Francis members began regular protests against abortion outside the Centro Medico de Mujeres Latinas on Sunset Boulevard back in 1984, the trouble didn’t start until late last year, the priests say.

However, the first rumble, which came on Dec. 10, wasn’t over abortion but over another emotional issue--AIDS. St. Francis was one of four Los Angeles Catholic churches disrupted during Sunday Masses by about 50 activists organized by ACT-UP/LA, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.

Those demonstrations, involving men dressed as angels with halos fashioned from metal coat hangers and gold glitter, protested the Catholic Church’s stand against the use of condoms to curb the spread of AIDS--a position that had just been reiterated by Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony. No physical damage or violence occurred at the protests.

A week earlier, however, bright red paint had been splattered on four area Catholic churches. A spokesman for a new group called Greater Religious Responsibility! (GRR!) claimed responsibility for the attack and for pasting posters of Mahony on church doors with the word “Murderer”--a reference to the archbishop’s anti-condom policy--printed in large letters across the bottom.

In February and March, in an apparently related reaction to the Catholic Church’s positions on AIDS and abortion, vandals three times splattered red paint and scrawled expletives on the facade of St. Catherine Laboure Church in Torrance.

Father John Schiavone, the associate pastor, said an unidentified man telephoned the church and said the vandalism would stop “if you stop harassing abortion clinics and stop murdering people with AIDS.”

In early February, a bucket of black paint was dumped on the front steps of St. Francis Church and the words “Mahony Murderer” and “GRR” scrawled on the walls and steps. And about 100 wire coat hangers were thrown on the church steps, “apparently to dramatize the danger of ‘back-room’ abortions,” St. Francis’ father Mahoney said.

Four more attacks at St. Francis followed in March and May, all involving paint thrown in glass Christmas ornaments. Once, the vandals also chained and padlocked the gates to the church parking lots on a Saturday night. The chains had to be cut off before Sunday Mass-goers could enter. The cost to repair the damage and clean up the paint now tops $2,000, Caruso said.

“In terms of houses of worship, this is unique,” said Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Frank Patchett. “And the desecration itself is extreme. The mosaic of the Crucifixion (on the front of the church) is being aimed at directly.”

So far, there are no firm leads and no suspects, according to Patchett, who has put extra police patrols in the neighborhood.

The priests say parishioners picketing at the neighboring clinic is confined to one hour on Saturday mornings. The picketers carry placards opposing abortion and pray the rosary out loud as they walk along the sidewalk fronting the clinic, said the brown-robed Mahoney. The priests do not take part, he said, nor do the parishioners attempt to block entrances to the clinic.

At the same time, “up to 30 to 40” pro-abortion advocates usually counterdemonstrate, Mahoney added, and “words are sometimes exchanged.” The abortion-rights demonstrators have denied any involvement in the vandalism.

Exacerbating the tensions, however, are two billboards erected on church property that are easily visible from Sunset and the clinic parking lot.

One says “Embarazada--Escoja La Vida” (“Pregnant--Choose Life”), and lists telephone numbers for a counseling hot line that opposes abortion. The other sign, also about 4 by 8 feet, says, in English, “An Alternative to Abortion,” and gives phone numbers.

Four times, the signs have been splashed with paint, and an anonymous caller told a church secretary that the vandalism would continue “as long as you continue your activities at the clinic.”

The priests have held a forum with parishioners to allow them to vent their “anger and shock that this would happen in the United States,” Father Caruso said. The church also is seeking a meeting with City Councilman Michael Woo to find ways to combat hate crimes.

Bunny Nightwalker Hatcher, senior staff consultant for the county Human Relations Commission, said commissioners have wrangled over “whether this is a hate crime. You have to remember that parishioners say the rosary at an abortion clinic every Saturday morning.

“Was it anti-Catholic or just anger?” she asked, adding that the commission decided that since the vandalism was “specifically targeted against a dislike of church doctrine, it is indeed a hate crime. You cannot separate the statement from the faith.”

Van de Kamp, who created the 16-member state hate crime commission in 1984 to review existing laws on such violence and recommend ways to prevent those crimes, said Friday that although “many times these crimes leave no physical scars . . . the emotional and psychological damage can be very, very significant. So often it is not only the victim who suffers, but the entire community which feels the pain of isolation and fear.”

Nonetheless, St. Francis of Assisi doesn’t plan to back off.

“We’re taking a moral stand here,” said Caruso. “Come what may.”