Mayor Defends Saints’ Statues on Public Safety Building, Accuses Opponents of Anti-Catholic Bias

But critics of the planned statues of St. Michael and St. Florian say they impermissibly favor Catholicism over other religions.
(L-R) Statues of St. Florian and St. Michael are planned for the 120,000-square-foot public safety building of Quincy, Mass., set to open this year. (photo: Courtesy photos / Office of Mayor Thomas Koch)

A Massachusetts mayor is going to bat for including statues of two Catholic saints on the city’s new public safety building, saying he picked them because of their importance to police and firefighters and accusing opponents of harboring “‘negative attitudes’ toward Catholicism.”

But lawyers for local residents who object to the planned 10-foot-high bronze statues of St. Michael and St. Florian say the mayor is making non-Catholics “feel like second-class citizens” because of the statues, which they say violates the Massachusetts Constitution by favoring one religion over another.

The two sides exchanged pointed arguments in court papers filed recently in a state lawsuit brought earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Thomas Koch, a practicing Catholic and the mayor of Quincy, a city of about 100,000 just south of Boston, wants to install on the façade of a forthcoming $175-million, 120,000-square-foot public safety building statues of St. Michael the Archangel (the patron saint of police officers) and St. Florian (the patron saint of firefighters). The statues are expected to cost about $850,000.

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From what I looked up it’s the most Catholic state in the USA. 44%.

It depends on where you go. The site I went to said it was Massachusetts. There is Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York… I think the interesting question would be which state has the most practicing Catholics.