Latest news with #St.Michael
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Quincy residents and ACLU sue to block Catholic statues at new city building
St. Michael is the patron saint of police and St. Florian is the patron saint of firefighters. The two public safety agencies will share the facility, now under construction on Sea Street. Advertisement Koch's office did not immediately return a telephone call and email seeking comment on Friday. In The 16 residents are described in the lawsuit as people who 'practice a variety of faiths, including Catholicism, Judaism, and Unitarianism, as well as Quincy residents who are Humanist, atheist, spiritual, or do not identify with a single faith or religious organization.' They object to using public funds — an estimated $850,000 — for the statues and also contend that Advertisement 'Affixing statues of prominent Catholic figures on the front of a government building conveys the message to Quincy residents, including Plaintiffs, that the City not only favors religion over non-religion, but Catholicism over all other denominations,' the lawsuit reads. Residents and the ACLU want a Superior Court judge to issue temporary and permanent injunctions barring Koch from spending any more money on the statues. Joining the ACLU and the residents are John R. Ellement can be reached at
Boston Globe
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Saints preserve us
There, Mayor Thomas P. Koch has decreed that the city's massively expensive new public safety building will be adorned with two 10-foot-tall statues of saints venerated in his deeply-held Catholic faith. The effigies will be heroic, and ripped. They will also cost taxpayers $850,000. One will depict St. Florian, patron saint of firefighters, a caped colossus dousing the flames. The other huge figure will be a winged and muscular St. Michael, patron saint of police officers, with his foot on the neck of a horned figure in his death throes. According to statements by his chief of staff adornments all by himself. He certainly didn't tell anybody else, it appears, given that everybody in the city only found out about them after the Patriot Ledger How wrong is all of this? Where to start? Advertisement Maybe with the poor, battered federal Constitution, which, like our state's, mandates that the government must not promote any religion. 'Having two larger-than-life statues of Catholic saints, or any primarily religious figure, is the type of endorsement of religion that our state and federal constitutions prohibit,' said Rachel Davidson, a staff attorney and First Amendment specialist at the ACLU of Massachusetts, which In a statement, the city said the mayor disagrees with the ACLU's characterization of the statues. 'As we've stated all along, the figures transcend religion and have a deep, long-held symbolic meaning of protection for our first responders,' it continued. 'This is about them.' Is it, though? It's one thing for a police officer to choose to carry around a medal that her faith says will offer divine protection. It's entirely another to erect two giant effigies outside a public building that will be used by people of all faiths, or of no faith at all. Advertisement And then there is the design of the statue of St. Michael itself — a warrior standing over a demon-like figure, stepping on his neck. Tone-deaf doesn't even begin to describe the wrongness of that image in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's neck for so long he died. City Councilor Dan Minton, a former member of the police force who served Quincy for decades, has called the image 'violent.' 'I don't want citizens to connect this statue with the way our Officers treat anyone,' Minton But good luck getting Koch to change his mind on this. The city's longest-serving mayor is rarely budged by public opposition. There was a notable exception last year, when he got himself a 79 percent pay raise, which would have boosted his salary from $150,000 to $285,000. After residents gathered more than 6,000 signatures for a recall petition he did agree A 'The fact that he believes he can authorize the enormous expense of these big, bombastic bronzes, with no discussion with the citizens or the City Council, that is offensive,' said Claire Fitzmaurice, who organized the petition. When a city councilor asked Koch's chief of staff what those who oppose the statues should do, he essentially told them to go pound sand. 'Wait for the beautiful public artwork to appear on these buildings and enjoy it with the rest of the public,' advised Chris Walker. 'The decision has been made.' Advertisement Does that kind of dismissive rhetoric remind you of anybody? Look, what we're seeing in Washington is a generational disaster, a constitutional crisis so monumental it's hard to see how we get out of it. But that doesn't mean we have to let this kind of anti-constitutional attitude creep into our local governments. We have to hold the line. Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at
