AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The parish priest of St Mary’s RC Church in St James, is be­ing hailed for his hero­ic ac­tions af­ter pre­vent­ing the theft of a taber­na­cle dur­ing a break-in ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Fr Em­manuel Pierre be­came aware of a dis­tur­bance at around 5 am and, up­on in­ves­ti­gat­ing, came face-to-face with two in­trud­ers in­side the church on George Cabral Street.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Fr Pierre con­front­ed the sus­pects, who had al­leged­ly tak­en two mon­strances and were at­tempt­ing to flee.

A mon­strance is a sa­cred ves­sel used in the Ro­man Catholic Church to dis­play the con­se­crat­ed Eu­charist for ado­ra­tion.

Dur­ing the con­fronta­tion, the sus­pects re­port­ed­ly dropped the taber­na­cle near the church’s en­trance be­fore es­cap­ing on foot with the two mon­strances.

Af­ter alert­ing po­lice, the shak­en priest al­so in­formed the Catholic Arch­dio­cese.

In a post on its Face­book page, the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain said, “We con­tin­ue to pray for the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T.

“There was a break-in at St Mary’s RC Church, Mu­cu­rapo, ear­ly this morn­ing. Fr Em­manuel Pierre came face-to-face with an in­trud­er at St Mary’s RC Church, Mu­cu­rapo, St James.

“The bur­glar es­caped with two mon­strances, a sig­nif­i­cant loss just days be­fore the cel­e­bra­tion of the Solem­ni­ty of Cor­pus Christi on Thurs­day.”

Speak­ing with The Catholic News, Fr Pierre said the in­trud­er gained en­try by pris­ing open a side door lo­cat­ed on the com­pound of the St James Med­ical Com­plex.

“As I en­tered the sac­risty, I saw a door open, and I knew some­thing was amiss. A ta­ble be­hind the door, the sac­risty was ran­sacked ... two mon­strances had dis­ap­peared,” he said.

Fr Pierre said he then turned on the lights and saw a man dressed in a white over­all walk­ing back in­to the sac­risty.

“So I shout­ed loud­ly, ‘I caught you!’ and he sped quick­ly to the door to es­cape,” he re­called.

The in­trud­er re­port­ed­ly es­caped through the side door and en­tered a wait­ing ve­hi­cle on the hos­pi­tal com­pound.

Asked whether he feared for his safe­ty dur­ing the en­counter, Fr Pierre said, “I was sur­prised, but fear didn’t come in­to me ... there was no fear.”