AN UNHOLY HEIST IN BRROKLYN
Church’s $2M gold tabernacle stolen
A bejeweled tabernacle believed to be worth $2 million was stolen from a Brooklyn church by godless thieves who also decapitated statues of angels, cops and church officials said Sunday.
The crooks used power tools to slice open a steel cabinet at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Park Slope and swipe the “pure 18karat gold tabernacle with jewels” sometime between Thursday and Saturday, police said.
The tabernacle is believed to date to the late 1800s. It held the Holy Eucharist and was only ever opened during Mass. The thieves also cut off the heads of angel statues flanking it and left the Eucharist strewn about the altar.
Church officials were horrified by the unholy act.
“To know that a burglar entered the most sacred space of our beautiful church and took great pains to cut into a security system is a heinous act of disrespect,” said the Rev. Frank Tumino, the church’s pastor.
The pastor said he came by the Sixth Avenue church at around 3:50 p.m. Saturday for confession and noticed the doors were ajar, although the house of worship had been locked since 7 p.m. Thursday.
He went into the sacristy and noticed that items were out of place. He called police.
Then he noticed the missing tabernacle and his heart dropped “right to the pit of my stomach,” he said.
‘Very, very violent’
“I could see that the tabernacle they had been working on, they had been really well prepared and working on cutting the steel cabinet that covered it,” Tumino said.
He said the removal of the tabernacle was “very, very violent.”
“I tend to think and look for the good in all people, so I never would have known, would have thought” this would happen, he said.
Tumino believes the culprits broke into the church not through the front door but by some other means. They exited through the front by breaking its lock, which was on the inside.
A safe was also broken into but nothing inside was stolen, church officials said. A DVR containing surveillance footage was taken.
He said many of the police officers who came to investigate the theft were disgusted.
“They equally were horrified,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many of the officers at varying levels kept on sharing, ‘This is horrendous, Father. This is so unbelievable.’ ”
He begged the thieves to bring back the tabernacle.
“As a human being, I say, ‘You’ve taken away something that is so beautiful, that has given people beauty among the ugliness of their lives at times,’ ” Tumino said.
“A sacred thing should not be cut up and sold. A sacred thing should not be melted down. A sacred thing should really be protected. And so that would be my greatest hope, that as it is sacred and has been used for over 100 years for sacred things, that it would return to sacred use.”