This is just a part of the world we live in.
On January 2nd, a monstrance was stolen off the altar of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in New York City. The crime was caught on camera, and amazingly the monstrance was later recovered.
Thankfully, the monstrance was empty and did not have the Blessed Sacrament in it.
As seen on surveillance footage (see it in the video below), the thief entered the church in the morning and first checked the donation box (ostensibly to steal from it) before going up to the altar and grabbing the monstrance.
The thief took the monstrance onto the subway. Later that day, a woman had gotten possession of the monstrance and given it to a subway worker. It’s not clear if the thief had left the monstrance on the subway and the woman had simply found it, or if she had gotten the monstrance from the thief directly.
With no way of identifying to whom the religious object belonged, the monstrance was put in the subway lost and found. However, a picture of the monstrance was posted on Facebook, quickly identified by commenters as the one stolen from the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, and was returned to the church. Police have not, however, determined who the thief was.
Here’s the full news report:
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