Steal church offerings, spotted and denounced

A dealer reported the suspicious car, intervention by the carabinieri. Don Fort: I was thinking of a drop in donations

PORCIA. With double-sided tape attached to the end of an extendable measuring tape, he fished loose change and banknotes from the offer box. He was blocked Thursday morning by the carabinieri of the Pordenone station outside the church of Santa Maria Assunta in via Marconi in Porcia while he was getting on board his car.

The immediate intervention of the carabinieri was triggered by the report of a dealer in the area, who noticed a suspicious car. The identity of the holder, a sixty year old of Italian nationality, emerged from the control of the license plate.

Given his past, for thefts of alms in churches, the command of the Pordenone station instantly sent a patrol to via Marconi. Just in time to reach the man before he walked away from Porcia.

The scene did not go unnoticed. Under the eyes of passers-by, the man handed over the tools of the trade to the soldiers of the Arma: pieces of extensible meter of various lengths, depending on the depth of the offering boxes and the loot of the day, around twenty euros in all. The sixty-year-old was denounced on the loose for theft: there were no longer the extremes of flagrancy. The passport was requested from the Pordenone Police Headquarters, to prevent him from returning.

“We learned of the theft after the fact – said the parish priest Don Daniele Fort -. It seemed to us that for a couple of months the offerings had dropped in the church, we were worried because we were not paying off.

I didn’t think there was anyone coming to steal. Then the carabinieri called me and told me they had stopped him. The traders across the street noticed him entering and leaving the church ».

It is not the first time that the parish has been targeted by thieves. Don Fort recalled how a few years ago the offering box was broken into (“we replaced it with an armored car”) while in 2000 a precious sixteenth-century statuette of Santa Barbara was stolen, by Ghilarduzzi, worth 30 thousand euros. (“Certainly a commissioned theft, we never found it again”).

“Since then we have installed a video surveillance system in the church – concluded Fr Fort -. Our technicians downloaded the videos and handed them over to the carabinieri ».

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