This handout picture taken in 2011 and released yesterday by the San Pietro della Ienca church shows a religious relic, a piece of cloth impregnated with the blood of Polish pope John Paul II (right). The relic was stolen on January 25 from the church in the mountainous Abruzzo region in central Italy.
A religious relic stained with Polish pope John Paul II’s blood has been stolen from a church in Italy, sparking a region-wide search with police and sniffer dogs.
It 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.
Contrary to previous media reports, the relic is not a vial of blood but a framed, tiny square of cloth stained with the pope’s blood, Pasquale Corriere, head of the “San Pietro della Ienca” association, told AFP.
The cloth, which reportedly comes from the robe the pontiff was wearing when he was shot in an assassination attempt in 1981, is enclosed in a gold and glass circular case.
“The church was closed because of a snow storm. When we went to reopen it, we saw the bars on one of the windows had been sawn through. The thieves entered that way, and stole the relic,” Corriere said.
The framed cloth was given to the small church in 2011 by Stanislaw Dziwisz, a cardinal who served as John Paul II’s personal secretary until his death in 2005.
“I have no idea who could be behind such a terrible theft,” Corriere said.
Dozens of police with sniffer dogs scoured the remote 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 – for clues to what the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana called “a sacrilegious theft that was probably commissioned by someone”.
Corriere said there are only three vials in the world containing the former pontiff’s blood.
John Paul II and the Italian pope John XXIII are set to become saints in a ceremony at the Vatican in April – an event which will substantially increase the value of the stolen relic.
The Polish pope was nearly killed in an assassination attempt in Saint Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.
Franca Corrieri, a member of the association that looks after the small church, told Reuters that 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 relic and a crucifix missing.
Corrieri said the incident felt more like a “kidnapping” than a theft.
“In a sense, a person has been stolen,” she said by telephone.
She said she could not say if the intention of the thieves may have been to seek a ransom.
Apart from the relic 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.