Thieves admit to stealing relic of Blessed John Paul II
Rome, January 31, 2014: Less than a week after a relic of Blessed John Paul II disappeared
from a country chapel east of Rome, Italian police arrested two men for the theft,
but the venerated piece of fabric stained with the late Pope’s blood was still missing.
Italian
media reported earlier today that police had found an empty iron reliquary, along
with a stolen cross, buried on the grounds of a drug treatment facility in the city
of L’Aquila, about 75 miles east of Rome. Two men in their early 20s, who were being
questioned in connection with another crime, confessed they had stolen the objects
and then revealed their location to police.
But the men said they had discarded
the relic itself – reportedly a piece of the clothing Blessed John Paul was wearing
when he was shot May 13, 1981 – by throwing it into some bushes near the facility.
Members of Italy’s specialised scientific police were searching the grounds.
Polish
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, who served as Blessed John Paul’s personal secretary
during his pontificate, gave the relic to the chapel in recognition of the late pope’s
many visits.
The relic and the cross were first reported missing from the church
of San Pietro della Ienca over the weekend of January 25-26. The church, where Blessed
John Paul often prayed, is located 13 miles north of L’Aquila, in the mountainous
Abruzzo region where the late pope frequently went on brief vacations.