The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating after a Catholic church in the Diocese of Brooklyn was vandalised over the weekend for the fourth time in two years.

On Saturday, August 1, cameras at St Rita Roman Catholic Church in Queens, New York, captured a masked man hopping the fence and approaching a statue of the Virgin Mary shortly before 2 a.m.

The man then proceeded to pull a hammer from his shorts pocket and smashed the statue from its pedestal. He then climbed back over the fence and walked away.

The Diocese of Brooklyn released video of the incident and is asking for help in identifying the culprit.

Pictures released by the diocese show that the Virgin Mary's head was knocked completely off by the vandal.

This is the fourth time St Rita's has been vandalised since 2024, and the third time in the last six months. All of the vandalism has targeted the various statues around and inside the church, says The Tablet, the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn.

On February 9, 2024, a vandal threw a traffic cone at the statue of the Virgin Mary. While the cone missed the statue, it smashed through a 60-year-old stained-glass window, The Tablet reported. A prayer group inside the church at the time was unharmed.

In March 2026, a man entered the church, took a coffee from a parishioner-run coffee service, and then proceeded to punch a statue of St Jude, the church's pastor, Fr Felix Sanchez, told The Tablet.

Later that month, on March 21, parishioners arriving for the 8 a.m. Mass discovered that someone had spray-painted a statue of St Francis of Assisi with blue paint and had written the word "pagan" on the pavement.

Authorities have not said whether they believe these incidents were committed by the same person. In both the March 21 and August 1 incidents, the culprit's face cannot be clearly seen on security camera footage.

The Diocese of Brooklyn is asking anyone with information about the vandalism to contact Crime Stoppers.

‍