The leader of a Northland church which was victim to the theft of a 100-year-old bell has offered the culprit forgiveness and hope.<\/p>\n
“[For me] it’s okay if someone can return the bell to the church and if they lack of some material needs, we can help them,” Father Bang Dinh said.<\/p>\n
The parish priest joined the congregation at at St Charles Borromeo Catholic church in R\u0101wene around six months ago and said a member of the parish noted the bell’s absence and called the police. <\/p>\n
Inspector John Fagan of Northland police said the half-meter bronze bell was stolen sometime between July 15 and July 22. <\/p>\n
“The congregation hopes this treasured community item can be returned without further damage or loss,” said Fagan.<\/p>\n
Father Dinh said the value of the church’s stolen bell lies in its history, not its material worth.<\/p>\n
“There is a history about that bell and so the value is about the history and the heritage is more than the cost.”<\/p>\n
Dinh said the bell was used for their once a week service and heard by 30-40 parishioners. <\/p>\n
He said the congregation had been very supportive, and “try their best” in call-outs to retrieve the bell, but that ultimately the cost would sadly fall upon them if it wasn’t returned. <\/p>\n
“We need to ask or to do some fundraising to get another one.”<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Winston Peters addresses the Stuart Nash saga, and what Sydney Sweeney\u2019s up to in Queenstown. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The leader of a Northland church which was victim to the theft of a 100-year-old bell has offered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,111,43,139,1067,69,12477],"class_list":["post-545946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nz","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545946","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=545946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}