The News You May Have Missed: October 2025

Good Over Evil?

A Massachusetts mayor defended his plan to install statues of two saints on a new public building, accusing opponents of harboring “negative attitudes” toward Catholicism. Thomas Koch, the Catholic mayor of Quincy, said the ten-foot-high bronze statues of St. Michael the Archangel (patron of policemen) and St. Florian (patron of firemen) have “nothing to do with Catholic sainthood” but “symbolize the values of truth, justice, and the prevalence of good over evil.” Lawyers representing 15 residents who object to the statues, which are expected to cost about $850,000, claim they violate the state constitution, which states that “no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.” The statues are “icons with unmistakable religious significance,” the lawyers said, and any “objective observer” would see them as “permanent installations that will invoke and convey, on an ongoing basis, the city’s preference for Catholic religious doctrine.” Koch retorted that “if Michael and Florian did not have significance in the police and fire service, respectively, I would not have selected them for installation.” He has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit (Catholic News Agency, Aug. 8).

Deliberate Desecration

Swiss prosecutors filed criminal charges against a Green Liberal Party leader who posted images of herself firing approximately 20 rounds from an air pistol at a reproduction of the 14th-century painting Madonna with Child and the Archangel Michael by Tommaso del Mazza (Catholic News Agency, July 22). Sanija Ameti is accused of violating Article 261 of the Swiss Penal Code, which penalizes anyone “who publicly and maliciously insults or mocks the religious convictions of others, and in particular their belief in God, or maliciously desecrates objects of religious veneration.” Ameti a Muslim-born atheist, targeted the heads of Mary and Jesus and then posted photographs of the desecrated image on Instagram with the caption abschalten, a German word meaning “switch off,” which, in this context, implies erasure or elimination. Amid outcry, Ameti resigned her position in the Green Liberal Party and issued an apology, claiming she didn’t recognize the religious significance of the imagery. The Zurich public prosecutor’s office, however, considers the act a deliberate “public staging” that constituted a “needlessly disparaging and hurtful disregard” for the beliefs of Christians, with the potential to disturb religious peace.

Rainbow Retraction

After a Muslim gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016, Florida’s Department of Transportation approved a rainbow crosswalk to honor the victims. This summer, the same department removed the painted-on rainbow in response to dual directives from Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump to cleanse roads and walkways of “social, political or ideological messages” (Washington Post, Aug. 22). Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan said DoT usually notifies her of its plans. “We’ve never had them just do something like this,” she said, “in the cover of darkness in the middle of the night.” DoT said it did notify local governments of noncompliance a week earlier and that it would commence “correcting pavement markings not in compliance.” State Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, who joined a small group using sidewalk chalk to recolor the freshly paved asphalt, said the LGBTQ+ community in Orlando is “not going to be erased,” and “there’s going to be a bigger rainbow that’s even more colorful and gayer, and even more visible than before.”