{"id":539,"date":"2008-03-10T16:50:50","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T16:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin.php"},"modified":"2008-03-10T16:50:50","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T16:50:50","slug":"missionaries-suspects-in-shrin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin","title":{"rendered":"Missionaries Suspects in Shrine Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press &#8211; March 10, 2008 <\/strong><br \/>\nSAN LUIS, Colo. &#8211; Photos posted on the Internet showed three Mormon missionaries mocking a Catholic shrine and holding the broken head of a statue of a saint there, a church official said.<br \/>\nCostilla County Sheriff Gilbert Martinez said deputies on Monday were beginning to investigate whether the men vandalized the Shrine of the Mexican Martyrs at the Chapel of All Saints, which stands on a butte overlooking San Luis.<br \/>\nThe photos show young men holding the broken head of a statue, preaching from the Book of Mormon at an altar and pretending to sacrifice each other.<br \/>\nThe vandalism apparently occurred in 2006, though damage to the statue went unnoticed until last week, when a parish member saw the photos on the picture-sharing Internet site Photobucket. They have since been taken down.<br \/>\nRobert Fotheringham, a regional missions official for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, confirmed the three men in the photos were church missionaries.<br \/>\n&#8220;We have a history of people doing things like this to us, so we&#8217;re mortified that our missionaries would do it to someone else,&#8221; Fotheringham said. &#8220;It&#8217;s beyond embarrassing. It&#8217;s inexcusable.&#8221;<br \/>\nHe declined to release their names.<br \/>\nThe damaged statue seen in one of the photos depicts Manuel Morales, who was the 28-year-old president of Mexico&#8217;s National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty when he was executed in 1926 for refusing to recognize laws he considered anti-religion. He was among more than two dozen Mexican saints canonized in 2000.<br \/>\nThe broken head had gone unnoticed because it had been placed back on the statue. The Sangre de Cristo Parish Council, based near the New Mexico line in San Luis, voted Sunday to ask for the investigation.<br \/>\n&#8220;The parish was a victim of a crime, and the council felt we should report it,&#8221; said Alonzo Payne, a lawyer in San Luis who belongs to the parish.<br \/>\nThe sheriff said charges could include desecration of a venerated object, criminal trespass, defacing property and bias-motivated crime.<br \/>\nPayne would not rule out a lawsuit seeking the cost of replacing or repairing the statue. The Rev. Patrick Valdez, the parish pastor, referred questions to Payne.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; March 10, 2008 SAN LUIS, Colo. &#8211; Photos posted on the Internet showed three Mormon missionaries mocking a Catholic shrine and holding the broken head of a statue of a saint there, a church official said. Costilla County Sheriff Gilbert Martinez said deputies on Monday were beginning to investigate whether the men&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Missionaries Suspects in Shrine Attack<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Missionaries Suspects in Shrine Attack\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press &#8211; March 10, 2008 SAN LUIS, Colo. &#8211; Photos posted on the Internet showed three Mormon missionaries mocking a Catholic shrine and holding the broken head of a statue of a saint there, a church official said. 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Costilla County Sheriff Gilbert Martinez said deputies on Monday were beginning to investigate whether the men&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-03-10T16:50:50+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin","name":"Missionaries Suspects in Shrine Attack","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-10T16:50:50+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-10T16:50:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/03\/missionaries-suspects-in-shrin#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Missionaries Suspects in Shrine Attack"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}