Greek police recover stolen 700-year-old Christian icon
By Matthew Samuel,WNS Greece Correspondent
ATHENS - Greek police on Saturday retrieved one of the most sacred symbols of Greece, a 700-year-old icon of the Virgin Mary that was stolen from a remote monastery in a stunning robbery more than a month ago. The Christian icon, depicting a baby Jesus in the embrace of the Virgin Mary, was found in a village in the southern Peloponnese where the thief, a 28-year-old Romanian national, had hidden it, according to officials. "The icon was dug out from the innards of a chapel," said Anastasios Dimoschakis, Greece's national police chief. "It had been placed in a wooden box, installed into one of the walls, and then covered with rocky plaster." The Romanian's name was not released. The robber confessed to his crime after resisting arrest during a raid at his home, in the village of Faraklo, south of Athens, late Friday, said Dimoschakis.
Hundreds of votive offerings left by worshippers on the sacred icon, which has been credited with miraculous powers, were found in the suspect's possession, police said. Video footage and photographs of the 500-year-old convent of Elona, where the icon was stolen in August, were also found during the raid. To steal the icon, thieves had to scale the cliff-side monastery, about 300 kilometers south of Athens, with professional climbing equipment. They crawled across the sanctuary's roof, broke a church window and stole the 14th-century icon, which measures 40 by 50 centimeters.
Saturday's arrest caps a five-week-long manhunt that involved a telephone surveillance operation after the Romanian placed a call to a senior prelate last week, demanding 1.2 million euros ($1.5 million) in ransom, police said. It was not clear whether the thief had staged the burglary at the behest of a private collector. "We just know that he was in contact with a private collector in Athens," Dimoschakis said.
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