NEW YORK -
Police say somebody busted into the altar at a New York Metropolis church, stole a US$2 million gold relic and eliminated the top from a statue of an angel sooner or later late final week.
The incident occurred between 6:30 p.m. Thursday and 4 p.m. Saturday at St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church, often called the "Notre Dame" of Brooklyn's Park Slope neighbourhood.
The church was closed for development on the time. Digital camera recordings from the church's safety system have been additionally stolen, the church's pastor stated.
The Diocese of Brooklyn known as it "a brazen crime of disrespect and hate."
The diocese stated the thief or thieves lower by way of a steel protecting casing and made off with a tabernacle relationship to the church's opening within the Eighteen Nineties.
The tabernacle, a field containing Holy Communion gadgets, was made from 18-carat gold and embellished with jewels, police and the diocese stated. It is valued at $2 million.
The diocese stated it's irreplaceable due to its historic and inventive worth.
In line with a guidebook posted on the church's web site, the tabernacle was inbuilt 1895 and restored in 1952 and 2000.
It is described as a "masterpiece and one of the costly tabernacles within the nation, guarded by its personal safety system," which entails an "electronically operated burglar-proof secure" and one-inch thick metal plates that "fully enclose the tabernacle."
Angel statues flanking the tabernacle have been decapitated and destroyed, the diocese stated. A secure within the vestry, the place monks put together for Mass, was additionally lower open however nothing was inside.
Holy Eucharist, bread consecrated because the physique of Christ, was taken from the tabernacle and thrown on the altar.
"That is devastating, because the Tabernacle is the central focus of our church outdoors of worship, holding the Physique of Christ, the Eucharist, which is delivered to the sick and homebound," Rev. Frank Tumino, the pastor of St. Augustine stated in an announcement issued by the diocese.
"To know that a burglar entered essentially the most sacred house of our stunning Church and took nice pains to chop right into a safety system is a heinous act of disrespect," Tumino stated.
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