Geisha Kow­lessar

Parish­ioners of St Ce­cil­ia's RC Church, Mara­cas-St Joseph, are try­ing to raise $5,000 to re­pair a prized stat­ue of the Vir­gin Mary, a source of so­lace and in­spi­ra­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty. In an tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, parish­ioner Di­anne Nar­ine said oth­er small­er stat­ues which al­so were par­tial­ly de­stroyed last Wednes­day night were re­paired and had been used dur­ing wor­ship.

He added: "We are in dis­cus­sions with the com­mu­ni­ty re­gard­ing the stat­ue but it ap­pears we are go­ing to re­pair it. It's a life-sized stat­ue and it might be dif­fi­cult to re­place the en­tire thing, cost-wise. "The stat­ue is very old and it is al­so very sen­ti­men­tal to the church so that's an­oth­er rea­son why we want to save it."

The stat­ue's head and the head of the stat­ue of the ba­by Je­sus. which lay in Mary's arms, were cut off. Still very trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent Nar­ine said the chil­dren who al­so wor­shipped at the church al­so were sad. Nar­ine said res­i­dents worked around-the-clock last Fri­day to en­sure the church was prop­er­ly cleaned for Mass over the week­end and the build­ing was blessed by parish priest Fr Ger­ard Tang Choon.

The church's PA sys­tem and a wall al­so were bad­ly dam­aged. Po­lice have ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a rob­bery as noth­ing was stolen. They be­lieve the van­dals de­stroyed the stat­ues us­ing a small cut­lass, which was stored in the build­ing and used to cut the flow­ers which adorned the church. No one has been ar­rest­ed but po­lice said they are work­ing on sev­er­al leads