A Wellington church is asking for the return of two icons stolen from their altar on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Religious artworks of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus and a copy of the famous Icon of Christ and the Abbot Mena in the Louvre were taken from St Peter’s Church on Willis St.<\/p>\n
Reverend Jean Malcolm, who made the image of Mary and Child herself, said they seemed to “have grown legs and walked”.<\/p>\n
The church leaves its doors open during daylight hours.<\/p>\n
She said the items did not have monetary value, but that they were “an important part of our environment of the church”.<\/p>\n
Believers use icons to help them pray as the holy people in the images let worshippers feel God’s presence, she said.<\/p>\n
“They leave a big hole, and we’re hoping that by advertising their loss, we might be able to get them back.”<\/p>\n
The church decided not to involve police in the matter.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want to take anyone to court about it; we just want our icons back.”<\/p>\n
She hoped for a reconcilation with the person who took them but understood if they were too shy or scared to come themselves.<\/p>\n
The church would close for a day if the icons were not returned by Tuesday. She said they would be “mourning for the loss of the icons and also mourning that this kind of hospitable space has been kind of harmed in this way”.<\/p>\n
She said the church understood life was hard for many at the moment, “but actually, the only way out of this difficult time is if we reach out to one another, if we remain open to one another”.<\/p>\n
She said the church had been targeted earlier this year as well: the brass eagle lectern was damaged when it proved too heavy to steal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wellington church is asking for the return of two icons stolen from their altar on Tuesday. Religious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-540418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}