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fpbFrom today's Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian newspaper.
LUCCA - Altar cloths, chasubles, ancient pews and kneelers, collections of stuff and calyxes. The parishioners of Vetriano, Colognora di Pescaia, and Celle di Puccini, three villages in the district of Lucca, did not know that they had, in their churches, a rather valuable artistic treasury. Stolen. 70-year-old Monsignor Giuseppe Ghilarducci, a canon of St. Martin's Cathedral, director of the diocesan archives and of the Cathedral Museum of Lucca, not to mention parish priest in the three parishes, is now under house arrest under the charge of receiving stolen goods. He is said to have seized hundreds of valuable antiques stolen from other churches all over Italy, which have been found in the cleric's own house and the parishes where he served.
The carabinieri (military police force) of Florence's art protection squad have raided the canon's dwellings and the parish churches, finding hundreds of works of art originating from churches. The provenance of most objects cannot be clearly established, but two calyxes were found to have been stolen from Rome and Terni, a small marble altar comes from Naples, and a Giovanni Marracci canvas from the sixteen hundreds, representing the "Virgin of the Rescue", comes from the church of Gello di Pescaglia, from which it had vanished.
Questioned by the investigating magistrate, Monsignor Ghilarducci said that he is an art lover and that he purchased the objects in good faith. Detectives are checking his bank records and his recorded dealings with arts and antiques merchangs, in particular five dealers from Florence and Lucca who regularly dealt with him.
FPB adds: even supposing for a minute that his story is true, one ought to remember that a priest makes a vow of poverty. Something has gone wrong with that vow, if this man, even with the post of a Canon and a number of other jobs, can afford to buy antiques on such a scale.
LUCCA - Altar cloths, chasubles, ancient pews and kneelers, collections of stuff and calyxes. The parishioners of Vetriano, Colognora di Pescaia, and Celle di Puccini, three villages in the district of Lucca, did not know that they had, in their churches, a rather valuable artistic treasury. Stolen. 70-year-old Monsignor Giuseppe Ghilarducci, a canon of St. Martin's Cathedral, director of the diocesan archives and of the Cathedral Museum of Lucca, not to mention parish priest in the three parishes, is now under house arrest under the charge of receiving stolen goods. He is said to have seized hundreds of valuable antiques stolen from other churches all over Italy, which have been found in the cleric's own house and the parishes where he served.
The carabinieri (military police force) of Florence's art protection squad have raided the canon's dwellings and the parish churches, finding hundreds of works of art originating from churches. The provenance of most objects cannot be clearly established, but two calyxes were found to have been stolen from Rome and Terni, a small marble altar comes from Naples, and a Giovanni Marracci canvas from the sixteen hundreds, representing the "Virgin of the Rescue", comes from the church of Gello di Pescaglia, from which it had vanished.
Questioned by the investigating magistrate, Monsignor Ghilarducci said that he is an art lover and that he purchased the objects in good faith. Detectives are checking his bank records and his recorded dealings with arts and antiques merchangs, in particular five dealers from Florence and Lucca who regularly dealt with him.
FPB adds: even supposing for a minute that his story is true, one ought to remember that a priest makes a vow of poverty. Something has gone wrong with that vow, if this man, even with the post of a Canon and a number of other jobs, can afford to buy antiques on such a scale.
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Date: 2005-09-16 07:53 pm (UTC)Regardless of the truth of the article.
The very idea that something like that could have happened is enough to make them drool and begin shouting from the rooftops.
Crap.
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Date: 2005-09-16 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 08:59 pm (UTC)It's that seige of which I so often write. While I know it to be never-ending on any side, it still saddens and often shocks me, the moronic ferocity of it all.