Thieves broke into a small church in the
mountains east of Rome over the
weekend and stole a reliquary with the
blood of the late Pope John Paul II .
A custodian, Franca Corrieri, said she had
discovered a broken window early on
Sunday morning and had called the
police. When they entered the small stone
church they found the gold reliquary and
a crucifix missing.
John Paul, who died in 2005, loved the
mountains in the Abruzzo region of Italy.
He would sometimes slip away from the
Vatican secretly to hike or ski there and
pray in the church.
Polish-born John Paul, who reigned for
27 years, is due to be made a saint of the
Roman Catholic church in May, meaning
the relic will become more noteworthy
and valuable.
In 2011, John Paul's former private
secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, gave
the local Abruzzo community some of the
late pontiff's blood as a token of the love
he had felt for the mountainous area.
It was put in a gold and glass circular
case and kept in a niche of the small
mountain church of San Pietro della
Ienca, near the city of L'Aquila.
Corrieri said on Monday the incident felt
more like a kidnapping than a theft. "In a
sense, a person has been stolen," she
said.
She said she could not say if the intention
of the thieves may have been to seek a
ransom for the blood.
Apart from the reliquary and a crucifix,
nothing else was stolen from the isolated
church, even though Corrieri said the
thieves would probably have had time to
take other objects during the night-time
theft.
Some of John Paul's blood was saved
after an assassination attempt that nearly
killed him in St Peter's Square on 13 May
1981.
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