(LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic priest is hoping that a cash reward will provide the incentive for a thief to return a gold-painted tabernacle that contains the Blessed Sacrament.
Fr. Ignacio Llorente of St. Michael the Archangel parish in Portland, Oregon told CBS affiliate KOIN-6 that security camera footage caught a burglar breaking into the church after midnight earlier this month.
“They climbed through the stairs to the bell tower … and then he entered the kind of office area,” Llorente said. “At 4 a.m. — he entered our chapel and took what in the Catholic faith is called the tabernacle.”
Video of the robbery suggests the man was African American, and that he stole it perhaps thinking it was pure gold.
“I don’t care for the bike or the speaker or the other things that were stolen, but yes, to recover the tabernacle, and most precisely, the Blessed Host that is inside the tabernacle,” Llorente remarked.
St. Michael’s has been posting flyers around the area with a $1,000 reward for the return of the tabernacle and consecrated host inside. KOIN-6 says police made an arrest, but the suspect was released.
St. Michael’s is not the only Catholic church in the Diocese of Portland to have been targeted in recent months.
St. Patrick’s in northwest Portland had its doors and sidewalk spray painted with the message “My Body, My Choice” the night before Sunday morning Mass on April 28.
The church has reportedly been attacked twice previously, once in June 2021 and again in July 2021 during a crime wave carried out on four Catholic churches in Portland over a six-week period that summer.
Fr. Llorente was the pastor at St. Patrick’s from 2012 to 2014. Born in Spain, he is a member of the Saint John Society. He is currently studying at the Sacred Heart Seminary for a Licentiate in Sacred Theology.
CatholicVote.org reported that there has been over 400 attacks on Catholic churches in the U.S. since 2020 and that St. Patrick’s was the 252nd since May 2022. CatholicVote’s “Violence Tracker” states that 27 attacks have occurred in 2024 alone and that of only 25 percent of cases end in an arrest
The website also found that the top 10 states with the most attacks on Catholic churches are California (55), New York (46), Pennsylvania (25), Texas (22), Colorado (17), New Jersey (17), Ohio (16), Florida (16), Massachusetts (16), and Oregon (15).
The Diocese of Portland has been overseen by Archbishop Alexander Sample since 2013. He previously led the Diocese of Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula starting in 2005.