Priest confronts burglar during church raid

A bur­glar es­caped with two mon­strances af­ter break­ing in­to St Mary’s RC Church in Mu­cu­rapo ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, just days be­fore the Catholic Church’s cel­e­bra­tion of Cor­pus Christi.

Ac­cord­ing to a post by the Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain, parish priest Fr Em­manuel Pierre came face-to-face with the in­trud­er short­ly af­ter 5 a.m. when he ar­rived to open the church ahead of the 6.15 a.m. Mass.

Fr Pierre told The Catholic News that the bur­glar gained en­try by pris­ing open a side door on the com­pound of the St James Med­ical Com­plex. When he en­tered the church, he im­me­di­ate­ly no­ticed signs that some­thing was wrong.

“As I en­tered the sac­risty, I saw a door open, and I knew some­thing was amiss,” Fr Pierre said. “The sac­risty was ran­sacked and two mon­strances had dis­ap­peared.”

Af­ter turn­ing on the lights, Fr Pierre saw a man dressed in a white over­all in­side the sac­risty.

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

The sus­pect fled through the side door and es­caped in a wait­ing ve­hi­cle on the hos­pi­tal com­pound.

Fr Pierre said the in­trud­er al­so at­tempt­ed to re­move the taber­na­cle but was un­suc­cess­ful.

“They tried to move the taber­na­cle, but they couldn’t. They didn’t have time to take it be­cause I met them,” he said.

The taber­na­cle was re­port­ed­ly left on the ground in­side the church.

Po­lice were con­tact­ed and ar­rived short­ly af­ter­wards to process the scene and col­lect ev­i­dence. The sched­uled 6.15 a.m. Mass was can­celled while of­fi­cers con­duct­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

De­spite the en­counter, Fr Pierre said he did not fear for his safe­ty.

“I was sur­prised but fear didn’t come in­to me. There was no fear,” he said.

The Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain said it con­tin­ues to pray for the crime sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the break-in con­tin­ue.