ITALY
Daily Mail (UK)
By OLLIE GILLMAN FOR MAILONLINE
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.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.