After responding to the fire, police said they saw the woman “quickly walking away” from the fire, which was set at an outdoor chapel where devotional candles are typically lit. Police said they noticed soot on her shirt and took her into custody, according to ABC7 Chicago.
Security footage shows Roque-Fermin throwing statues, buckets, chairs, and planter pots into the fire to stoke the flames, police said. The footage, observed by CNA, shows rosaries being thrown into the fire.
On its website, the shrine says it considers itself “an extension of that mission given in Mexico in the year 1531” to St. Juan Diego.
“It’s a desecration of a very holy place,” one pilgrim, Ethel Gina Bailon, told ABC7.
“And there’s no regard anymore for a holy place,” Bailon said.
Father Esequiel Sanchez, the shrine’s rector, told CNA Wednesday that the outdoor area that was set on fire is called the Chapel of the Resurrected Christ. Pilgrims often gravitate toward this chapel and leave written petitions, candles, photographs, or locks of hair of loved ones, he said.