NPS investigating Easter incident that Catholic Church official says could be hate crime

HARPERS FERRY — National Park Service law enforcement park rangers are investigating what an area Catholic parish priest said is a potential hate crime outside a Harpers Ferry church on Easter Sunday.

Parishioners exited Easter Mass at the historic St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church to find communion wafers spread over the ground in the parking lot and the road leading to the lot, according to parishioner Richard Laurine and Father Timothy Grassi.

Laurine said the wafers were concentrated around the driver's side doors so that parishioners would have to step on them to enter their vehicles.

Grassi said the concern was that the wafers were consecrated, meaning they had been changed into the body and blood of Christ.

But Grassi said he does not believe the wafers were consecreated.

Just in case, church officials "treated them in a way that we took care of them by properly burying them," he said.

"I think it's just someone who's trying to do something evil," Grassi said in a phone interview Wednesday morning. "I think they're trying to do something evil and just want to try to scare people ...

"Why I say I think it was an evil act — having people think they were desecrating Christ."

Asked if he considered it a potential hate crime, Grassi said, "In a certain sense, I think it is."

Asked if there had been other issues, Grassi said "Nothing that I'm aware of, of late."

Of the Easter incident, Grassi said, "More than anything else, it's just a way to put fear into people or to make some sort of a statement. What the statement is, we don't know. We haven't received anything."

There were close to 100 people at the Easter Mass, he said.

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NPS law enforcement investigating crime outside Harpers Ferry church

Kristen Maxfield, interpretation and education program manager for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, confirmed that law enforcement park rangers with the park's Division of Visitor and Resource Protection are investigating the matter.

The park service owns the church parking lot.

Asked if the matter were being investigated as a possible hate crime, Maxfield wrote in an email that "this is an ongoing investigation and we don't have anything further to share at this point."

Investigators are asking any witnesses in the area between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 31, to call 304-535-6029. They can let park officials know they may have witnessed something and leave their contact information, Maxfield wrote. Potential witnesses will receive a call back from an investigating park ranger.

"We do know that the wafers used were not taken from St. Peter's," Maxfield wrote.

Grassi said the wafers, or hosts, did not come from the church.

"We were in the church at the time this was done," Grassi said. "While we were having the Easter Mass, someone must have apparently come and thrown these hosts around. My suspicion is they were not consecrated. We don't know for sure."

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Communion wafers can be purchased "anyplace," including online, he said.

Grassi said his biggest concern is wanting to know where the wafers came from.

Laurine said he helped pick up the wafers. There were enough communion wafers to fill four large plastic cups.

Grassi is also a pastor at St. James, the Greater Catholic Church in Charles Town. St. Peter's falls under his auspices, he said.

The historic chapel sits on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River and is a popular site for weddings, Grassi said. The church is about 150 years old and is used for limited services, including a weekly Mass on Sunday mornings, he said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Pastor says Easter crime outside Harpers Ferry church was 'evil act'