Federal authorities will try to determine if the trashing of a parochial school in California by vandals is a continuation of an epidemic of criminal attacks on Catholic institutions that soared during the Biden administration and with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is investigating as a potential hate crime the late night ransacking inside Holy Innocents Catholic School in Long Beach earlier this week — a brazen local crime that included the mutilation and beheading of a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary.

Division Head Harmeet Dhillon confirmed the probe on the heels of a Long Beach Police Department investigation into the extensive damage that one regional Catholic school official on inspecting the destruction simply said, “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

As the Long Beach Post News described the scene:

Statues of the Virgin Mary were smashed — hands and at least one head chopped off. Prayer books were dumped from bookshelves and strewn across the floor. The tabernacle had been ripped from its chapel, its doors pried partially open. Snack boxes, raided. Guitars and musical instruments, damaged. Curtains pulled down, cabinets torn from the walls. Audiovisual equipment was pillaged from closets and stacked on carts. The internet had been cut. Tiny peg dolls, used for teaching the youngest students, ransacked.

Cyril Cruz, the school’s principal, whose son attends the school, also described how she found the school Monday morning in a post.

“A statue of the blessed mother which had been here since the school opened (in 1958) was desecrated and smashed,” she said. “Another statue was beheaded in there. I think the part that was the most disheartening is the desecration of the religious objects. These are items of our faith.”

The parochial school serves about 300 students largely from the Hispanic and Filipino communities in grades K through 12 at affordable tuition rates.

While the Long Beach police told Breitbart News on Wednesday that the incident was “a crime of opportunity with damage caused during the course of a burglary,” others predict another motive may be in play.

“The persecution of the holy innocents continues to be real and literal,” the self-described “patriotic” group Catholics for Catholics, wrote in an X post.

“I have collaborated with this community for many years and it breaks my heart to see them attacked and persecuted in such a vile way,” a leader of the national group added. “Sadly, these attacks are on the rise in the United States, but few people talk about it.”

The advocacy organization Catholic Votes has accumulated data on such incidents in at least 43 states on its website with a “Violence Tracker.”

It reported as of Tuesday:

Since May 28, 2020, there have been at least 547 attacks against Catholic churches in the United States, including acts of arson which damaged or destroyed historic churches; spray-painting and graffiti of satanic messages; rocks and bricks thrown through windows; statues destroyed (often with heads cut off); and illegal disruptions of Mass. Attacks spiked dramatically after the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in May 2022. At least 380 attacks have been perpetrated against Catholic churches since the Supreme Court leak, with many including graffiti with pro-abortion messages. Crucially, while a handful of the attacks have included thefts, the vast majority have only involved property destruction, indicating that the primary motive is not material gain.

Attacks on Christian churches and institutions in general, however, were trending down in 2025, but still higher compared to a period from 2018 to 2022, according to a report last year from the Washington-based Family Research Council.

Potentially adding to the problem, as Breitbart News reported at the time, was the demonization of traditionalist Catholics by the Biden administration’s FBI with a 2023 memo that created a firestorm in Congress and among Catholic advocates.

The Richmond, VA office of the FBI had alleged in a memo that violent extremists’ “interest” in “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology was growing and that it therefore presented an opportunity for the FBI to engage with certain churches to goad the churches’ leadership into serving as FBI “tripwires” who would operate like unofficial informants to the FBI.

The memo was ultimately retracted, but not before the FBI had interviewed a priest and choir director in Richmond to “inform on a parishioner under investigation,” according to a U.S. House report on the matter.

In 2024, in an interview with Breitbart’s Matthew Perdie, former east Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland said the FBI’s targeting of Catholics had the hallmark of authoritarian regimes and was motivated by traditional Catholics’ rejection of the “woke” agenda.

Pope Francis subsequently removed Strickland from his position, reportedly for his often fierce criticisms of the pontiff and his delay in fully implementing the Pope’s restrictions on the Latin Mass as favored by traditionalist Catholics.

Holy Innocents School offers a “Catholic liberal arts” approach to education that is distinctively Catholic in its content and practices.

It states on its website:

At Holy Innocents School, we are not just an educational institution; we are a faith community. Rooted in Catholic values, our school offers opportunities for students to live a Christian way of life… Today, this tradition lives on through dedicated teachers who center their work around the Eucharist, joyful students eager to learn, and families committed to the faith formation of their children.

Despite the widespread damage, the school reportedly resumed classes on Tuesday and held a mass for students the following day in its gym. Students also knelt in prayer in their classrooms. Parents stopped by to help clean up.

A GoFundMe page already had raised more than $180,000 in just two days to address the damages.

The Long Beach Police Department has shared little about the crime and has not released an inventory of stolen items. In a statement released Wednesday to Breitbart News, the department stated it had not been contacted by federal investigators.

“Suspect information and circumstances of the incident are under investigation,” the statement said.

Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.