Holy relic pilfered at Ploughing

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Stradbally Church robbed in broad daylight

A Dublin priest has called on whoever took a much-loved relic during the Ploughing Championships to give it back so it may “give consolation to a wider scope of people”.

Fr Bryan Shortall OFM Cap. of Priorswood parish in Dublin borrowed the relic of Italian teenager and saint-to-be Carlo Acutis from another parish, aiming to offer blessings during the three-day event.

However, on the first day, Tuesday, between 10-10.30am it disappeared from a table at the Vocations Ireland stall where Fr Shortall was based. While he engaged security and Midlands Radio who were broadcasting at the Ploughing, due to the tens of thousands of people in attendance, he says it was “like finding a needle in a haystack”.

The priest has since taken to social media to try and reach whoever now has the relic.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Fr Shortall said: “We were assisting Vocations Ireland at their stall, and different religious orders were part of the expo. I was there with the relic of Padre Pio and I also had the relic of Carlo Acutis.

“There was free stuff there, medals, pictures, friendship bracelets for the young people, and people were coming up and asking for a blessing with the relics. Early on the first day I left both relics down on a little table and I imagine someone inadvertently picked up the relic of Carlo Acutis, it’s only a small box with a clear plastic cover, and took it away thinking ‘it’s beautiful and ‘I’ll take that’,” he said.

Fr Shortall believes it was mistakenly taken and that “Somebody somewhere around the country must have a first class relic of Carlo Acutis that inadvertently was taken, perhaps thinking it was on offer, so possibly some household has it and we would love to have it back… so that locals and others can venerate this saint-to-be, Carlo Acutis, who we believe is going to be canonised around springtime next year – with the help of God – in Rome by Pope Francis”.

Blessed Carlo Acutis will likely be proclaimed a saint during the 2025 Jubilee, which will make him the Church’s first ever millennial saint. Born to Italian parents in London 1991, Blessed Acutis, nicknamed ‘God’s influencer’, was a web designer who died from leukemia at the age of 15 in Monza, Italy. He was known for his devotion to Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions, which he catalogued on a website he designed.

Over the weekend demand to venerate the relic of Blessed Acutis’s heart caused a parish in Manchester to use a ticketing website to book prayer timeslots as thousands of people, including many young families, made the pilgrimage.

Regarding the relic taken during the Ploughing, Fr Shortall added: “Perhaps the relic has given somebody consolation, and maybe now that is done, we can have it back to give consolation to a wider scope of people.”

Meanwhile, the day after the relic went missing and just down the road from the Ploughing Championships the church in Stradbally was robbed in the middle of the day according to the parish priest.

Fr David Vard told The Irish Catholic: “The candle shrines were all broken in to and all the money taken, they were all destroyed so we will have to get new ones.” He said it happened at about 2.30pm on Wednesday, September 18 when the church was empty.

Fortunately Fr Vard does not believe there was much money, as they were emptied on Monday after the weekend Mass. Fr Vard expressed his disappointment at the robbery and the impact it has on church security, saying that “I think at the moment it’s kind of rare to have churches open during the day, I know in Dublin a lot of churches close relatively early. I’d love to keep the church open in Stradbally but if this keeps happening, I don’t know what to do because this isn’t the first time it has happened”.

The incident was caught on the churches CCTV and the guards were called. In a statement to this paper An Garda acknowledged a “report of an incident of theft” at that time and date in Stradbally and that “investigations are ongoing at this time”.