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Pope John Paul II died in 2005. MICHAEL PROBST/AP

Vial thieves steal blood of Pope John Paul II

Sniffer dogs and 50 police officers are on the hunt for the deceased pontiff’s blood.

A TUBE CONTAINING Polish Pope John Paul II’s blood has been stolen from a church in Italy, sparking a region-wide search involving sniffer dogs and 50 police officers according to reports in Italian media.

The vial was stolen on Saturday from the San Pietro della Ienca church in the mountainous Abruzzo region in central Italy where the pope, who died in 2005, loved to go on skiing holidays, according to the Repubblica daily.

Police and sniffer dogs are sweeping the area, famed for its weathered stone houses and the little church where the head of the Catholic Church once reportedly took refuge in a storm.

Pasquale Corriere, head of the “San Pietro della Ienca” association, said there are only three vials in the world containing the former pontiff’s blood.

John Paul II and the Italian pope John XXIII, known as the “good pope”,  are set to become saints in a ceremony at the Vatican in April expected to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.

© – AFP 2014

Read: Two miracles later and Pope John Paul II is on his way to sainthood >

Read: 9 reasons why Pope John Paul II was the best pope >

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    Mute Gavin Scott
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:02 PM

    I never did invest in a blackberry. I never had that 5 minutes to spare to send a text, or the navigational skills requires to change a setting. Totally unnatural computing…

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    Mute Lára de Siúin
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 7:47 PM

    Bye bye Blackberry!!

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    Mute Rúairí O’ Sullivan
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 7:56 PM

    Oh how the mighty have fallen. First Nokia and now BBY, the two biggest companies at a time….

    See what happens if you keep dishing out the same products year after year..

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    Mute Paul Nolan
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:00 PM

    Eh… Apple same shit different advert and same idiots buying it up

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    Mute Paddy Murphy
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:00 PM

    That’s lego fu@#ed so

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    Mute Gavin Scott
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:07 PM

    Same what???

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    Mute Enola Straight
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 9:40 PM

    Amazing the morons who are obsessed with Apple buyers.

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    Mute Stephen
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:11 PM

    Putting it away with my Betamax Video recorder.

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    Mute Michael Russell
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:19 PM

    I imagined Microsoft were eyeing them up. Combine them with Nokia, and you have a great army of hardware engineers …. Combine that with the software expertise and they can bring out a true end to end experience that could compete with apple and the Samsung/android devices.

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    Mute Gavin Scott
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:27 PM

    Two bits of poo does not maketh a cutting edge byte

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    Mute Cpm
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:33 PM

    Earth calling Michael

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    Mute Michael Russell
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:55 PM

    Just to be clear, I hate blackberry products, and similarly dislike the Nokia ones- but they have some good hardware features (and engineers) as do Nokia. Windows are clawing desperately to find a decent hardware software offering. Seems like a triple win for the right price.

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    Mute Little Jim
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:55 PM

    It’s no use, he’s on his BlackBerry.

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    Mute Michael Russell
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:57 PM

    Hahaha nope- I’m an apple freak. Closer to queuing up for the iPhone like the lads in the other article, than ever using anything else!

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    Mute Enola Straight
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 9:41 PM

    I have an iPhone. I use a blackberry in work. The BB is a solid device but it will never compete with real smartphones.

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    Mute Pauliebhoy
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:14 PM

    Playbook tablet is top quality however they abandoned it recently, let them rot

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    Mute John king
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 8:41 PM

    Ah, just sell it to the Chinese and let them strip the company appart and transfer all the knowledge and jobs to China…

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    Mute James Buchanan
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 10:52 PM

    Theres no beating the samsungs.

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    Mute Emily Elephant
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    Sep 23rd 2013, 10:20 PM

    BlackBerry is fooked, so someone pays $4.7B for it. In a couple of years they’ll sell it to someone else for another few billion. The bankers get to keep the coins which stick to the shovel, probably about 100M. Wall Street, man.

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    Mute Paul Jacob
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    Sep 24th 2013, 8:33 AM

    struggling blackberry sold for $4.3billion! I have one and was going to let it go for a tenner ! Will have to change my done deal add!

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    Sep 23rd 2013, 11:10 PM

    Tumbleweed

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