They were not the messages expected at a church during the Christmas season.

Bright orange, offensive graffiti was spray-painted across the front doors and a side door of London's St. Patrick's Roman Catholic church at Oakland Avenue and Dundas Street.

"666."

"God is dead."

"Jesus is dead."

Pentagrams.

On the back of the church and on the mail box was smeared the word "Punx."

Rev. David Furlonger found the vandalism yesterday when he opened the church for regular Sunday services, including a baptism.

He said he even joked wryly "our Christmas decorations outside aren't up to what they usually are."

Furlonger isn't convinced the words were religiously motivated. "I don't believe it was an act of satanists. It was the act of young kids who were vandals who pick up the language of something else all together," he said.

London police are taking the desecration of the church seriously. They are asking anyone with information to come forward.

The vandalism took place sometime after Saturday at 9 p.m., when evening mass ended, and 8 a.m. yesterday when Furlonger arrived.

Furlonger said he has experienced far more extensive satanic vandalism when he served as a priest in Moose Jaw, Sask.

This time, he said, he is more worried about the artists than the offensive art.

"Actually I am more concerned about the young people who did it, because it looks like their lives are kind of empty, meaningless.

"I'd like to see them with a little more hope and excitement in their lives."

He said his parishioners "were not scandalized or upset" by the graffiti.

The orange paint will be gone before next week's mass, he said.