A Prophet In Brooklyn, Twice Stolen, Is Found

Pictured: The site of the stolen statue. Photos by John V. Santore

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — As Waleska Soto, secretary of the Saints Peter and Paul Rectory on South 3rd Street, prepared to face two more television cameras, a sympathetic reporter told her the interview would be brief.

She placed her hands together in mock prayer, looked up toward the heavens and said, "Thank you."

Pix11, Fox and the New York Post were there. CBS had just left. Outside, Mother Maria Bendita, originally from Argentina, was giving an interview to Telemundo. Under Friday's gloomy skies, she stood in front of what was, until just moments earlier, the site of the rectory's stolen Sacred Heart of Jesus statue. But suddenly, the story had changed.

Waleska Soto, left, said she couldn't remember a time when so much media had descended on her church

A week earlier, the 4-foot statue of Christ had been snatched from in front of the building by two young women and a man. (Mother Bendita described them to one outlet as "hipsters"). Security cameras caught them pulling the statue from its pedestal, wrapping it in a bag and darting away into the night.

But soon after, Soto said, the statue was found in the trash about a block away by a man named Gabriel. He gave it to his mother, a woman who sometimes attends mass at Saints Peter and Paul.

When Gabriel's mother saw news reports that the Jesus statue had been stolen, the church was contacted and the statue was returned.

The thieves had perhaps acted in "a moment of ignorance," Soto guessed.

"Maybe [it was] a game," she said.

If they were to "ring the bell and come say I'm sorry personally, that would be awesome," she said.

The Sacred Heart statue following its recovery

Mother Bendita, her young face framed by a blue habit, described the range of emotions she felt when she first watched surveillance video of the theft.

At first, she grew enraged, she said.

But then Bendita thought: "Poor people. They do not know what they're doing."

At least, she said, she hoped they didn't.

"It's like making fun of something sacred," she said — an act she finds "especially disrespectful."

Williamsburg's stolen Sacred Heart of Jesus statue was a fairly new heirloom, donated to the rectory in 2012 by a New Jersey couple, Kathleen and George Damarel, after a previous statue was pinched from the same location.

During its most recent adventure, the statue sustained damage to its hand and base, according to Carolyn Erstad, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Brooklyn.

It is currently being restored by D'Ambrosio Ecclesiastical Art Studios, Erstad said, after which it will be placed inside the church.

Meanwhile, D'Ambrosio is donating a larger statue to stand in the cursed spot outside the rectory.

And that wasn't the only offer of its kind last week, Soto said: Others had come by to measure the pedestal and offer replacement statues.

"It really doesn't matter what is thrown to us," Soto said. "We stick together as one family."

The parish on South 3rd Street was founded in 1844, Mother Bendita said, and is one of the oldest in Brooklyn.

She said she arrived in Brooklyn three years ago, after pastoring in Peru and Phoenix, Arizona.

Most of the church's hundreds of parishioners today come from Latin American countries, she said — the latest phase of a congregation that was originally Irish, then Polish, and is now heavily Puerto Rican and Dominican.

Saints Peter and Paul is now preparing for renovations that will last until 2019. However, Bendita said the church will will remain open for services throughout.

"It's very rich and it has a lot of history," Bendita said of her church. "We are going to be open for everybody to come."