Last Friday afternoon revealed the troubling fact that not even a church perogi sale is off-limits to the criminal mind-set here.

Butler regards itself as a church-going community, but the tall, slender robber who entered Ukrainian Hall at SS. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Arbor Street in Lyndora just before 3 o'clock that day didn't have prayer on his mind.

An estimate has not been issued regarding how much money the perogi sale might have lost in the holdup, although the perogis sell for $6 a dozen and many dozens usually are sold.

Every other week, women of the church use 200 to 300 pounds of potatoes for the perogis that become a popular meal for many people in the area.

But as unsettling as last Friday's incident was, more disturbing is the prospect that no fundraising activity where cash is present can now feel comfortable about carrying on without special safeguards for the money being put in place.

A cash box or cash register might no longer be sufficient. What happened Friday could happen again.

And, for many churches, organizations and fire departments, the Lenten fish fry time of year has arrived, and cash will be present at those weekly events, just as it was at Friday's sale.

Money from the perogi sale — SS. Peter and Paul uses the spelling "pirohi" — helps the church pay its bills. While the workers and other members of the congregation are angry and disappointed about what occurred, no doubt some of the good people of that church are, in the spirit of forgiveness, praying for the robber and any accomplice or accomplices he might have had.

Good people do that, with the hope that their prayerful intervention might someday help such an individual right his errant path.

But prayer for the future won't undo the unnerving experience that the five women who were operating the perogi sale endured last Friday.

The robber who entered Ukrainian Hall greeted those women with the message, "Hello ladies. This is a robbery."

Maureen Winkler, 61, a regular volunteer at the biweekly sale, said, "I thought he was joking" — even though the robber was wearing a mask.

"I got up to serve him," Winkler said, apparently not suspicious of the man's motives because of the cold weather outside that might have induced him to have his face covered.

After the robber reached into the wooden cash register — not a particularly secure repository for the sale's money — and emptied it of its cash, he left the hall and ran to a waiting vehicle on nearby Peterson Street. During his escape, he was followed by a female church member who saw him get into what she described as a black sports car.

Authorities haven't revealed whether anyone was believed to have been waiting in the vehicle, but it was acknowledged that the vehicle, once reaching Hansen Avenue, turned south toward Route 8.

Lent, which began this week, is observed in Christian churches as a time of fasting and penitence. Some people might wonder whether an individual who would brazenly steal from a church would have the capacity for either.

That aside, most people don't expect a church to be targeted for robbery while conducting what most envision as a small-scale fundraising activity benefiting a good cause.

Unfortunately, last Friday proved them wrong. And, more unfortunately, the robber still is free — perhaps stalking another victim.