Italian priest with 'relic fetish' is charged with murdering 92-year-old monsignor 'who caught him stealing sacred statuettes'

By Ollie Gillman
Daily Mail (UK)
August 23, 2016

http://goo.gl/HR9xzI

A Catholic priest has been charged with murdering a 92-year-old Italian monsignor who allegedly caught him stealing sacred statuettes. The dead priest was found in this manor

A Catholic priest has been charged with murdering a 92-year-old Italian monsignor who allegedly caught him stealing sacred statuettes.

Giuseppe Rocco had a broken neck and had been strangled to death when he was found in his bedroom in the Cleric House in Trieste, Italy, in April 2014 by a housekeeper who came in to check on him.

Prosecutors believe Father Paolo Piccoli - who read Rocco his last rites - killed the older priest because he had reported him for allegedly stealing a set of figurines.

Rocco told Catholic authorities in the weeks before he was killed that statuettes of the Madonna, horse and a ship had gone missing.

They suddenly reappeared after his complaint, but he was suspected Piccoli was to blame, news.com.au reported.

Piccoli, 52, had been accused of stealing relics from another parish in the past and is believed to have a fetish for old artifacts.

Court documents suggest he landed his father in debt after spending huge sums of money on authentic robes when he was a boy.

The church warned Piccoli that he could face discipline after he was accused of the theft, which was not proven.

Weeks later, on the morning of April 25, housekeeper Eleanora Dibitonto found Rocco dead in his small room within the manor in north east Italy.

Ms Dibitonto called in Piccoli to give the priest his last rites as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.

Paramedics discovered a bone sticking out of the priest's neck, as well as two spots of blood underneath his body.

Piccoli claimed he had a condition with his skin that caused sores and bleeding, and that his blood ended up underneath Rocco's body when he was praying over the 92-year-old's dead body.

The father also claimed there were others in the manor that night, but Ms Dibitonto insists it was just the three of them.

'People were coming and going all the time in that house,' Piccoli told police. 

'We were never alone. There was a centre for volunteers, a journalist, and a professor who often stayed at the house.' 

But court documents claim Piccoli got up early on the morning of the murder to confront Rocco about the theft allegation, leading to an argument which allegedly ended with Piccoli strangling Rocco.

Piccoli has been charged with aggravated murder.