A man was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace in connection with the disruption of a Sunday Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
“He jumped up out of the pew,” a deacon said. “He was coming towards Father, I stepped in front of him, and a bunch of other men had come up at the same time. And so we just kind of pushed him to the side and he was fighting, fighting, fighting.”
The man who was arrested described himself as a Christian and said, “I have been sent here by God to preach to the Catholics.”
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 at CatholicVote.org lists additional attacks.