Mystery solved as statue is returned from U.S. to Italy
PHILADELPHIA — A statue missing for decades from an Italian church is being returned by an American couple who finally solved the mystery of their family’s odd relic.
Ed Nader told U.S.-based website NewsWorks the statue of St. Pantaleon, considered the patron saint of physicians, spent years in his great-grandmother’s closet.
Nader recently discovered that it actually belonged to the church in Montauro, Italy, so Nader agreed to return it.
The statue of the saint bound to a tree arrived in the United States in 1946, when a group of Montauro parishioners brought it to Boston for a feast-day parade, Nader said. For some reason, they left it with his great-grandmother in Philadelphia and never returned to retrieve it.
She kept it in a walk-in closet on the third storey of her home and lit candles at its base.
“As kids, every time we went to the third floor to go to the bathroom, we’d run past that room,” Nader said.
“We were so frightened of that statue. My mother, me, my aunt, her children, my children.”
When Nader’s greatgrandmother died, the statue moved with him to Exton, Pennsylvania, where his wife kept it hidden under a sheet in the den.
“He’s not something you want to look at every day,” she said. “If he had more of a majestic pose, maybe I would keep him in the living room.”
Nader recently travelled to Montauro, his greatgrandmother’s birthplace, and mentioned his family’s statue to the small town’s mayor.
The mayor instantly became excited, Nader said, and told them through an interpreter that it belonged to the church, where its place had been sitting empty for years.
The Naders paid to have it sent back in time for the saint’s feast day this week. The Naders were planning to be in Montauro for the celebration.