Police say someone has broken into the altar at a New York City church, stole a $2m gold relic and removed the head from a statue of an angel.
The incident happened between 6.30pm last Thursday and 4pm on Saturday, the police said on Monday, at St Augustine’s Roman Catholic church, known as the “Notre Dame” of Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.
The church was closed for construction at the time. Camera recordings from the church’s security system were also stolen, the church’s pastor said.
The diocese of Brooklyn called it “a brazen crime of disrespect and hate”.
The diocese said the thief or thieves cut through a metal protective casing, apparently with a specialist saw, and made off with a tabernacle dating to the church’s opening in the 1890s.
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