“The statue was not destroyed but was overturned from its stone base, and its two arms were damaged in the fall,” said Bishop Jean-Paul Vesco in a press release. It was an attempted theft that went wrong.

According to the same source, the public prosecutor presiding over the court of Oran ordered arrest warrants for four church guards. The investigation revealed that they are the ones guilty of this criminal act.

These individuals would have ransacked the place of worship and destroyed the statue of the Virgin Mary by trying to steal it and sell it on the black market, as an object of antiquity.

Source: christianophobie.fr

Image: fr.aleteia.org