Shocking Graffiti on Pietà
During the night before All Saints Day, the Pietà in front of the parish church St. Georg in Freising was defaced with black graffiti and vulgar sexual images. Just two weeks earlier, church painter Florian Böck had finished restoring the statue of the Mary, Mother of Sorrows (Mater Dolorosa), holding the corpse of Jesus Christ taken from the cross. Böck expressed his anger: “We really need to ask ourselves, who could do something like this?” and said it would be a long process to clean the statue and bring it to the previous status. The damage to the statue which dates back to 1640 was estimated by the police at around 3000 euros.
Parish priest Peter Lederer and administrative director Elisabeth Meier were both “totally shocked” when they received the report of the vandalism. Meier said: "We are all stunned (…) this has nothing to do with a Halloween joke or anything like that."
Source: Merkur.de
Photo used with the permission of Rainer Lehmann, photographer