Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.13.2009
The weekend burglary of a south-side church didn’t yield the kind of financial windfall thieves were hoping for.
So instead, ironically, they stole something that symbolizes lost causes.
A 3-foot statue of St. Jude — the patron saint of desperate or lost causes — was stolen early Sunday from St. Monica Catholic Church, office manager Rosita Peralta said.
The statue had been housed in a shrine in the southeast corner of the church, 212 W. Medina Road, a gift two years ago from an anonymous donor.
The theft occurred around 3:15 a.m., she said, because that’s when the church’s security camera stopped working after the church’s power was cut.
“They had to hop a wooden fence to cut the electricity,” Peralta said. “Even the oldest employees here didn’t know where to go to cut the power.”
It appeared the church was accessed through a window and the church’s safe was tampered with but not opened, Peralta said. The statue and an unknown amount of money in a St. Vincent de Paul poor box at the front of the church were taken, she said.
An antique copper holy-water pot was also destroyed, Peralta said.
“They smashed the heck out of it,” she said. “Maybe it was because there was nothing else to take.”
The church filed a report with Tucson police on Monday, Peralta said.
News of the theft spread through St. Monica’s seven Sunday services, in the hope someone would come forward with information.
“Somebody’s got to know something,” Peralta said. “Either they’re going to try to sell it or give it away.”
This church was also the site of vandalism last christmas when someone smashed a window and stole the baby Jesus from a manger in front of the alter. It also has been subject to people braking into cars and stealing from parishners during mass.
