Annunciation Church in Prince Rupert received significant damage to one of its large windows over the weekend.
A baseball sized dent, that shattered the window looks as if someone could have thrown a stone at it, although the first parishioners that discovered the damage Sunday morning didn’t find anything, other than some broken glass on the ground below.
The window is on the Fifth Avenue side of the building and luckily, the stained glass window inside wasn’t damaged.
Whatever was thrown at the window, didn’t break right through, which is probably why the alarm system wasn’t triggered when the damage occurred.
“It was a stain glassed window from the original Annunciation Church and the person who donated it is probably in eternity now,” said Father Mike Rabino Sunday afternoon.
According to Father Rabino the damage must have occurred between Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
Father left the church on Saturday around 8 p.m.
“I stayed after 5 p.m. mass to prepare for a prayer group session the following day. When I left to go home I did my usual walk around to see if everything’s okay and didn’t notice any damage then,” he said.
When he arrived Sunday morning at the church around 9:05 a.m. a few parishioners had arrived ahead of him and had already discovered the broken window.
By the time people arrived for the 10:00 a.m. service, the glass had been cleaned up.
Father Rabino has only been stationed in Prince Rupert since December 26. Originally from the Philippines he has been in Canada for a year. He replaced Father Chris Lynch, who left the parish to take the position at Vancouver College.
It’s the first incident of this nature that has occurred since Father Rabino arrived, and while he said he didn’t know the intentions of the person that did the damage, he was concerned.
“My only thing is, this is a sacred place. For me it’s a desecration in some way, even though I don’t know the motive and have no idea of why it was done,” he said.