Police suppose anyone has broken into the altar at a New York Metropolis church, stole a $2m gold relic and removed the head from a statue of an angel.
The incident took build between 6.30pm final Thursday and 4pm on Saturday, the police said on Monday, at St Augustine’s Roman Catholic church, typically called the “Notre Dame” of Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.
The church became once closed for building at the time. Digicam recordings from the church’s security plan were also stolen, the church’s pastor said.
The diocese of Brooklyn called it “a brazen crime of disrespect and loathe”.
The diocese said the thief or thieves chop thru a steel protective casing, it looks with a specialist saw, and made off with a tabernacle dating to the church’s opening within the 1890s.
The tabernacle, a field containing holy communion items, became once made of 18-carat gold and decorated with jewels, police and the diocese said, and is valued at $2m.
The diocese said it is irreplaceable on tale of its historic and inventive label.
In step with a guidebook posted on the church’s net build, the tabernacle became once constructed in 1895 and restored in 1952 and 2000.
It’s described as a “masterpiece and one of many costliest tabernacles within the nation, guarded by its have security plan”, which involves an “electronically operated burglar-proof safe” and one-inch thick steel plates that “entirely enclose the