Follow-up on vandalism to statue of St. Anne

After Saints Preserve Us, She Returns the Favor : NY Times

George Ferrandi has seen saints at their worst - stained by lipstick, burned, cracked and faded - and with skilled hands and the tools of her trade, she skillfully restores them. She gives them a makeover and has built a career out of it.

Saints preserve us, the saying goes, but Ms. Ferrandi helps preserve saints.

Ms. Ferrandi (who goes by George even though her name is Georgina) combined the knowledge from her graduate degree in sculpture with her experience in her father's church restoration business to found her own company that fixes religious statuary, primarily Roman Catholic figures.

When St. Francis needs retouching or there is a crack in the Madonna, Ms. Ferrandi, 38, is the one who gets the call.

Her phone rang again recently after a 25-year-old man who the police said had a history of mental illness attacked a granite statue of St. Anne, the mother of Mary, outside a Roman Catholic church in Queens Village with a sword and a shotgun, decapitating the sculpture. Two police officers responding to emergency calls were shot and wounded by the man outside SS. Joachim and Anne Roman Catholic Church.