Cathedral Guadalupe -- or, more verbosely, the Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady Guadalupe -- is a magnificent building. Hewn from red brick and limestone, the stately, 111-year-old Neo-Gothic church stands sentry on the corner of Ross Avenue and Olive Street in the Arts District, housing the second largest Catholic conregation in the United States. It's a humble rebuke to the inert steel and glass that dominates downtown.
And who would desecrate such a stately and inspiring house of God? Quite a few people, actually. There was that Friday in 2006 when, in the days leading up to the massive, half-million-person immigration protest, a man called threatening to "kill all the wetbacks at the march." Then, a year later, some asshole knocked over and shattered a statue of the Virgin Mary, first carefully undoing the bolts that held it in place, causing $2,500 worth of damage. And so on. All told, there have been three dozen police reports filed at the church since 2005.
Up until Thursday, 2013 had been pretty quiet. But then, around 2 p.m., a church employee walked up to the second-floor and discovered William Donnell Day, an unemployed 35-year-old from Palestine, Texas. According to a police report, he was "in the restroom asleep, with his pants down."
Day -- apparently fully clothed at the time -- had been warned to stay away after showing up at the church on June 29. But he doesn't seem to be the type to take orders from authority figures. When police showed up on Thursday, and the church employee again warned Day to stay away, he replied: "Fuck you, I'll come back anytime I want. You can't make me leave, you fucking Mexican."
Cathedral Guadalupe is safe from pantsless folks for the time being at least. Day was taken to Lew Sterrett, where he's being held on $500 bond on a criminal trespass charge.