VATICAN – The Vatican has condemned Saturday’s violent clashes in central Rome including an attack by protesters on a church in which a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary were destroyed. The 18th-century church of Santi Marcellino and Pietro is near St John Lateran square where much of Saturday’s violence occurred.
“When I came down, I saw the entrance door had been smashed in,” the church’s parish priest, Father Giuseppe Ciucci, was quoted by Italian media as saying. “The Virgin Mary’s statue which was at the entrance had been taken away and I saw it had been thrown into the street and smashed,” he said. “I went into the sacristy and I saw the door there was also destroyed. The large crucifix at the entrance had been vandalised,” he added.
Hundreds of protesters torched cars, smashed banks and hurled rocks at police during the clashes between security forces and anti-capitalist protesters in Rome’s worst violence in years causing damage of one million euros ($1.4 million) to public property, the city’s mayor said Sunday.
