The Church of the Gesu, a Jesuit parish that serves the Marquette University community, was vandalized on March 18.
“Most of the damaged items were from the 1960s and 1970s, aside from a statue of St. Anne which is over a century old,” according to a local media report.
The church’s pastor, Father Michael Simone, S.J., said that the perpetrator was experiencing a mental health crisis. “He needs our prayers,” he said. “He needs our help.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has documented over 400 acts of vandalism, arson, and other destruction at parishes and other Catholic sites in the United States since 2020. A tracker from CatholicVote.org lists additional attacks.