Massachusetts high court rules against saints statues

Two statues of Catholic saints will remain off of a Massachusetts city’s new public safety building for the foreseeable future now that the state’s highest court has upheld a lower court order prohibiting them from being erected.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday that the $850,000, 10-foot-tall bronze statues of St. Michael and St. Florian are so closely allied with Catholicism that putting them on a public building would amount to “government preferential treatment of a particular religion,” thus violating the state constitution.

“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, 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,” the state’s highest court said in a 34-page decision .

The unanimous court upheld a preliminary injunction on behalf of a dozen residents of the city of Quincy who object to the statues, which are currently in storage in a town…