PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Police are investigating after someone stole money from a donation box at a Northeast Philadelphia church while congregants were inside praying during a Holy Saturday service.
Tony Volpe, a sexton at Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church in Tacony, was decorating another church for Easter when he received a call about the theft. It happened as the church was holding a wake of Jesus, from 9 a.m. to noon.
He said he didn’t even register that the donation box had been broken into and stolen when he first saw it on Saturday.
“I looked at it and I saw the box on the floor and saw change. But do you ever look at something and it doesn’t signal in the brain?” he recalled. “The box was smashed. It’s attached to the community rail … and all the change and stuff was on the floor.”
Police said a volunteer manning the door at the church left at 11, thinking another volunteer was backing her up. But when that woman arrived, she saw the box had been broken into.
The box is emptied every week. Volpe said the money is going toward building a new chapel. Police did not say how much money was taken.
Despite the theft, Volpe said it has brought the church community together on the holiest of weekends.
“It’s just really a shame that somebody did do it,” he noted. “But we’ve had a lot of people call and offer to make donations, which is very nice of people — a lot of the alumni of the church — and it just brought us all together.”
Easter masses went on as planned on Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, Volpe offered forgiveness for the perpetrator.
“We’re gonna hope that that person really needed it,” he added. “Maybe somebody stole it because they were really hungry and needed food. Why else would you steal from a church?
“It’s not gonna damper our spirit. We’re here, and we’re praying [that] Our Lady of Consolation will go on for maybe another 100 years.”