GEORGE BOWEN
Spiritual guide.

DAZED FAMILY: Rosemary Hernandez (right) leaves court in Manhattan yesterday with daughter Becky following the arraignment of husband Pedro Hernandez — 33 years to the day that, he says, he murdered 6-year-old Etan Patz in a SoHo bodega. (
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MOORESTOWN, NJ — As their world came crashing down around them, Pedro Hernandez’s weeping wife and daughter fled to the one place they knew they could find peace — their church.

“They came in, and they were in tears, very distressed,” Pastor George Bowen, of the Maranatha Christian Fellowship, told The Post of his emotional meeting Thursday with the two women.

“They wanted me to have the news early that [Pedro] had been taken into custody.”

Rosemary Hernandez appeared confused and stunned that her husband was picked up a day earlier by NYPD detectives for the murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz, one of New York’s most famous child-abduction victims, Bowen said.

“It was as if they had been run over by a Mack truck and were just devastated,” Bowen said of Rosemary Hernandez and her daughter, Becky, who’s in her 20s.

“Every aspect of Rosemary’s body language and demeanor indicated: ‘I’m shocked. How was I married to this guy for all these years?’ ”

Pedro Hernandez was never involved in the church’s activities, but his wife and daughter served as greeters, “people with big smiles on their faces who’d say, ‘It’s great to have you here. Here’s some information about the church,’ ” Bowen said.

But Thursday — the day after Pedro Hernandez’s arrest and as he was detailing his alleged heinous crime to cops — Hernandez’s wife cried as she explained that she had to end her and her daughter’s treasured church involvement, he said.

“Rosemary said, ‘I can’t be a greeter anymore and want to just relinquish those responsibilities,’ ” the pastor said.

“They were just crying.’’

The family had been attending the conservative Evangelical church in Moorestown, NJ, nearly every Sunday for about six to seven years, Bowen said.

He said over the last year Rosemary, who had worked for insurance companies, had opened up about being unemployed and about the family’s financial difficulties — but never mentioned marital problems.

On Thursday morning, when Rosemary and Becky arrived at the church, they “could barely talk,” he said.

“New York City police had come down about the unsolved disappearance and presumed murder some 30 years ago,’’ he said. “I said I would pray for them.’’

Hernandez, a former SoHo bodega stock boy, confessed to NYPD cops that he murdered Etan the first time he met the child, in 1979, because he “just felt the urge to kill.”

Bowen said Pedro Hernandez and his family regularly sat in the second row of the church.

“Pedro didn’t talk at all . . . I don’t think anyone knew him. He was an enigma,” the pastor said.

“My view is [that his family] had absolutely no idea. Pedro is a very quiet, private man, and it seems to me that that carried into every arena of his life.”

Bowen said he would have had no trouble turning Pedro in had he known .

“I can tell you this: He never confessed to me. We don’t have the clergy confidentiality, like the Catholic Church,” Bowen said.

“If he had confessed to me, I would have been the first one to take him to the police station. We believe in justice as well as mercy.”

Additional reporting by Jeane MacIntosh