Bejeweled crown stolen from Virgin Mary statue at Philadelphia church

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A man broke into a Philadelphia church and stole a 125-year-old bejeweled crown from atop a marble statue of the Virgin Mary, city police said Monday.

The burglary at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church occurred around 1:10 a.m. Saturday when the thief smashed through a stained-glass window, police said. The break-in was captured on surveillance video that police released Monday.

The man then climbed into the upper nave of the church and went straight to the statue and crown, the church’s archivist, Anne Kirkwood, told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

While church staff members were preparing for a baptism Sunday, they found broken glass and soon noticed the missing crown, which a church history from the 1950s indicated was created by James E. Caldwell & Co. around 1900.

It was made from jewelry and gems donated by parishioners to celebrate the church’s reopening after a fire in 1899. Kirkwood said that in 2015, when the crown was briefly removed from the statue and examined, she noted its maker’s inscription was “J.E. Caldwell & Co.”

The damaged stained glass window also dates to the church’s reopening in 1902 and was fashioned in Munich, Germany.

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This story was first published Jan. 13, 2025. It was updated Jan. 16, 2025, to make clear that the name of the company who made the crown that was stolen from a Philadelphia church changed the style of its name over the years and that the crown’s inscription reads J.E. Caldwell & Co.

The Associated Press