(Photo credit: CBS Boston)
Two statues of saints must remain in storage despite a Massachusetts town paying over $750,000 for them, the state’s highest court ruled.
The town of Quincy is home to John Adams and John Quincy Adams’ presidential site. A new home for the police and fire departments opened in 2017.
Mayor Tom Koch contacted an Italian sculptor in 2023 and commissioned 10-foot bronze statues of St. Michael and St. Florian for the building. They are the respective patron saints of police officers and firefighters.
The statue of St. Michael features the archangel stepping on a demon’s head. Michael is recognized in the Catholic church as the leader of God’s army who cast Satan out of heaven.
St. Florian is depicted as a giant Roman soldier pouring water on a building that is on fire. Catholics honor him as a martyr who saved a town from burning down by praying for God’s help.
In 2025, the media and Council discovered that the mayor had spent $761,000 on the statues out of a total cost of $850,000. The mayor’s chief of staff said the mayor did not inform Council about the statues.
Claire Fitzmaurice and 14 citizens sued the city, claiming a violation of the Massachusetts declaration of rights, which states that “all religious sects and denominations . . . shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.”
Ironically, the original law written by the Congregationalists who founded Quincy in 1780 stated that the legislature “shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of GOD, and for support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality.”
The Superior Court granted the taxpayers an injunction against the display of the statues. The city appealed, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed with the citizens in an opinion written by Justice Scott Kafker.
He stated that statues made the taxpayers feel “alienated and excluded,” adding that they had standing to file the injunction under the “ten-taxpayer rule.”
“Additional moneys will be required to transport the statues from storage and affix them to the public safety building’s façade,” he wrote. “For these reasons, the ten-taxpayer statute confers standing on the plaintiffs to enjoin further expenditure and installation of the statues.”
“The likelihood that these statues of religious figures closely associated with the Catholic faith could be viewed by the public as endorsement of a particular religion, and thus subordination of others,” he added, “is enhanced by the fact that the statues are not part of a larger collection of statues and monuments that includes nonreligious ones, or statues of figures of particular importance to other religions.”
