A US priest has called on his congregation to pray for the person who defaced their church with offensive pro-abortion graffiti.
Fr. Timothy Furlow, the priest of St. Patrick's, Portland, Oregon's oldest Roman Catholic Church, said the vandal spray-painted an expletive followed by "my body my choice".
According to Catholic News Agency, during a recent Sunday service, Fr. Timothy shared his decision to leave the graffiti visible as a stark reminder of the Gospel's core message of forgiveness and God's indispensable role in doing good.
"I wanted you to see it," he explained in his sermon.
"And the reason is because it fits perfectly with what the core message of the Gospel is," he continued.
"The core message here is pretty simple: We can't do anything good apart from God. Not a thing. We can't pull off a good thing. It's just absolutely impossible."
Fr. Timothy expressed mixed feelings about the vandal, hoping for justice but also desiring a transformative encounter with God for both himself and the perpetrator. "I want him to be an usher," he explained.
"I want him to come to my door and say, 'I have no idea what's going on. I have never experienced anything like this in my life. But somehow in the core of my being, I know that God is real and Jesus is God,'" he added.
The priest urged his congregation to "genuinely pray for that individual and all those similar to him in Portland, Oregon, who are suffering with a broken heart and seeking solace in darkness instead of turning to the Lord for healing."