A 6-foot tall tabernacle covered in gold and jewels and valued at $2 million was stolen from a Roman Catholic church at some point Friday night, ripped out of the sanctuary of Brooklyn, New York’s St. Augustine parish in Park Slope, the Washington Post reports.
In the Roman Catholic faith, a tabernacle is the vessel used to hold the unleavened bread and wine that gets transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ during the Holy Eucharist. The unused portions are stored in the church’s tabernacle to be consumed later.
A parish priest left the rectory to go to another parish to hear confession when he noticed the front door of St. Augustine’s open. He saw the hosts that were stored in the tabernacle scattered around the altar and went behind the altar to find the tabernacle ripped from its alcove.