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File photo Shutterstock/Constantine Pankin
France
'The toilets were absolutely full of crucifixes': Two elderly people arrested over theft of religious items
More than 3,000 religious objects were found in their homes.
6.20am, 9 Mar 2016
27.9k
21
A MAN IN his 80s and a woman in her 60s have been arrested in France after thousands of stolen church artefacts were found in their homes.
The man reportedly has anti-clerical views and the woman was recently baptised.
Police confirmed that the pair were picked up after the detective work of a cleric in a Paris suburb correctly predicted when they would return to his church.
More than 3,000 religious objects — including crosses, statues, candles and rosary beads — were recovered from the homes of the man and his neighbour in the southern suburb of Bagneux during a search late last week.
“At the home of the octogenarian the toilets were absolutely full of crucifixes, there wasn’t so much as a square centimetre of space,” Ludovic Serre, a priest whose parish was among those targeted, said.
He has now managed to recover some of the lost items.
Serre spoke of the frequent disappearance of objects from his Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in Chaville since last November.
“As soon as I put a cross out on the altar of confession, it would disappear,” he said, adding that when the crib was taken from the Christmas nativity display in December “it was too much and I filed a complaint”.
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€10,000-worth
Police said that other religious buildings had been targeted by the same criminals over several weeks, with everything from cheap candles to old Russian icons disappearing, with the total worth of the stolen items put at around €10,000.
Serre, whose church is now protected by a video surveillance system, said the robbers appeared to have a quite precise method of operating, arriving “every four or five weeks, on Sundays between 4-4:30 pm”.
“I told the police that, according to my calculations, they should return on 21 February. And they did. Although half an hour early,” he added.
The investigators then followed the two suspects to their homes where they were quickly arrested.
The police had expected that the church thieves would be youngsters, the priest said.
“In fact they found an 80-year-old … a revolutionary who believes that church property should be taken away” and a woman in her sixties who “had recently been baptised”.
Was there only one photographer in dublin, couldn’t have got a pic outside Dublin no? Typical!! Not to put dampener on it as was great cause fair play to those who ran, just a gentle reminder to media life exists outside of DUBLIN!!!!
Ah sure we’re all friends. . . I’m sure there will be photos of the cork run somewhere tomorrow.all the journalists on the score.ie are too busy trying to come up with more Roy keane articles for us then to worry about the night run anywhere else!!
Ran the race last night, had a great time :) thanks to all the organisers & volunteers for their free time & support. Well Done to all all over the Country & further a field.
The reason i was suggesting it should be ran in the park is for a number of obvious reasons.
Free traffic congestion
Free parking where ever you want.
Free lighting (generatated lighting).
Don’t get me wrong i agree with the purpose of the run for charities and all that and i salute everybody that run’s the race…..just think its more of a suitable place.
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