Italian police have recovered a vial of blood from Pope John Paul II contained in a backpack which three thieves stole from a priest on a train.
The priest, Father Augusto Baldini, had left Rome for a sanctuary near the port of Civitavecchia, where the relic was to be put on display.
When he got off the train at Civitavecchia, a rail hub, Father Baldini realised his backpack was missing. He told police he suspected a man traveling on the train with two others, who had left the train a few stops before his own destination.
“One of the thieves distracted me, telling me I was on the wrong train,” Father Baldini said. “I turned round to look, and it was then that his accomplices stole my backpack.”
“Maybe they thought there was a computer in the backpack,” he said. The priest said that he had been “desperate” after realising the relic was stolen and had prayed for its recovery.
After Father Baldini reported the theft, railway police in the town of Marina di Cerveteri, where the men left the train, searched for a few hours before finding the relic, without the backpack, in a stand of cane grass near the railway station.
Police said it wasn’t clear if the thieves had realised what the vial contained and tossed it away, or had planned on coming back later to retrieve the relic.
The relic consisted of a reliquary in the form of an open book with gilded pages in which was embedded a tiny glass vial containing the blood, which was taken from the late pope following the attempt on his life in St Peter’s Square by a Turkish gunman in 1981.
Sources:
Image: New York Daily News
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