Archbishop leads exorcism prayer after statue of saint toppled in San Francisco park
A Catholic archbishop on Saturday led a prayer of exorcism at a San Francisco park where protesters had torn down a statue of California mission system founder Father Junipero Serra a week earlier, KPIX reports.
“Evil is here,” said Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone in a video of the ceremony at Golden Gate Park, reported the Catholic News Agency.
He sprinkled holy water around the base of the toppled statue and recited the St. Michael Prayer, a prayer of exorcism against the power of Satan, according to the publication. The prayer is not one of those used in cases of suspected demonic possession.
Protesters on June 19 tore down statues of Serra, Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant at Golden Gate Park, McClatchy News previously reported. They also spray-painted a statue of Miguel de Cervantes.
Key, author of the national anthem, owned slaves while Grant, who led Union forces to victory in the Civil War and later became president, once owned a slave but freed the man before the war. Cervantes, author of “Don Quixote,” was himself a slave at one point.
Serra, made a saint by Pope Francis in 2015, founded the first of what would become 21 Catholic missions in California in 1769. Critics say the missions enslaved and abused Native California tribes.
“The destruction and domination never ended, it just continues and evolved to the words he spoke that day as a continuation to vilify our spirituality,” said Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, KCBS Radio reported.
Cordileone on Saturday condemned the destruction of Serra’s statue as “blasphemy,” KPIX reported.
“An act of sacrilege occurred here that is an act of the evil one,” he said, according to the station. “Evil has made itself present here.”
Cordileone, who said he grew up near the first mission founded by Serra in San Diego, said the destruction of the saint’s statue left him “very distressed” and “inflicted a great wound in my soul,” the Catholic News Agency reported.
In a June 20 statement, Mayor London Breed said she understands “the very real pain in this country rooted in our history of slavery and oppression, especially against African-Americans and Indigenous people,” reported The San Francisco Chronicle.
“But the damage done to our park last night went far beyond just the statues that were torn down, and included significant damage to Golden Gate Park,” Breed said, according to the publication. “Every dollar we spend cleaning up this vandalism takes funding away from actually supporting our community, including our African-American community.”
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 8:58 AM with the headline "Archbishop leads exorcism prayer after statue of saint toppled in San Francisco park."