A religious reliquary containing blood from the late Pope John Paul II has been stolen from a remote mountain church in Italy, with speculation that a Satanic group could be behind the theft.
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| Pope John Paul II and the relic containing his blood (inset). |
Police were searching for any trace of the receptacle, which was stolen in the Abruzzo region at the weekend. “It’s possible that there could be Satanic sects behind the theft,” said Giovanni Panunzio, the national coordinator of an anti-occult group. “This time of year is important in the Satanic calendar and culminates in the Satanic ‘new year’ on Feb 1.”
The ornate gold object contains a fragment of material, stained with blood, which was purportedly taken from the clothing worn by John Paul II after he was shot during the failed attempt on his life in St Peter’s Square in 1981.
It was donated to the church in May 2011 by Stanislaw Dzuwisz, a Polish cardinal and the Pope’s former personal secretary.
The reliquary is one of just a handful in the world that contains the blood of the Polish pope, who died in 2005 and was succeeded by Benedict XVI.
The theft of the reliquary comes as the Vatican prepares to canonise John Paul II, along with another former Pope, John XXIII, at a ceremony on April 27.
In Aug 2012, another relic containing a vial of the late Pope’s blood was stolen from a Catholic priest while he was traveling on a train north of Rome.
The relic was in his backpack, which was swiped by thieves but later recovered in a thicket of cane grass by police.--Source: Telegraph