(LifeSiteNews) — A  young Kentucky man pleaded guilty this week to decapitating the heads of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus with an ax at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Hopkinsville, falsely claiming the faithful “worshipped” the statue earlier this year.

Marley Taylor, 27, pleaded guilty to one count of damaging religious property on November 3 after admitting that he had vandalized the statue in response to Catholics “worshipping” it, per the Western District of Kentucky’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. In January, Taylor had been accused of driving to Saints Peter and Paul and viciously taking an ax to the heads of both the baby Jesus and His Blessed Mother.

Despite Taylor’s claims, Catholics do not idolatrously worship statues but create statues, as well as paintings, icons, and other art depicting Our Lord and the saints as tools to help reflect on and venerate them.

“We cannot and will not accept attacks on the free exercise of religion, nor the desecration of sacred religious symbols,” U.S. Attorney Kyle G. Bumgarner said in a statement. “Mr. Taylor intentionally desecrated two of Christianity’s most revered symbols, statues of Mary and Jesus, as an attack on the Christian faith. His motives and his conduct have earned these federal charges. Let this be a warning that no attack on the exercise of religion — regardless of faith — will be tolerated in the Western District of Kentucky.”

Hopkinsville Police Department Chief Jason Newby further stressed in a statement that the community’s beliefs should never be violated, as Taylor did with this act of vandalism.

“Citizens have the right to live in a society where their beliefs and safety should never be violated by those who threaten either with violence,” he said. “We will continue working together to ensure our commitment to make Hopkinsville a safer community remains successful.”

Taylor is scheduled to be sentenced in March 2026 and faces up to three years in prison, a maximum of one year of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.

In recent years, cases of vandalism, desecration, and other acts of hostility on  Catholic and other Christian churches across the U.S. have skyrocketed.

An August Family Research Council (FRC) report identified 1,384 acts of hostility against Christian churches committed between January 2018 and December 2024. The evangelical group found that 50 crimes were committed in 2018, 83 in 2019, 55 in 2020, and 98 in 2021. However, in 2022, when Dobbs was leaked, the number of attacks more than doubled, reaching 198.

READ: Dramatic rise in attacks on Christian churches in US, Israel: reports

The hostile aggressions more than doubled again in 2023, reaching 485, before leveling off in 2024 with 415. Of the 2024 incidents, the majority were vandalism (284). There were 55 cases of arson, 28 gun-related crimes, and 14 bomb threats.

To Catholic churches specifically, within the last year alone, a group of satanists broke into a Kansas parish, smashed statues, candles, and windows, and decapitated a statue of St. Patrick in March. In May, a man planted dynamite inside a Pennsylvania adoration chapel, damaging the monstrance and other parts of the chapel. In June, statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary were beheaded by a vandal at a Texas church.

READ: Statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Virgin Mary beheaded at Texas church

Saints Peter and Paul Church did not respond to LifeSite’s request for comment by publication time.