IN RUSSIAN POLAND.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1910, Page 10

IN RUSSIAN POLAND.

■ ■*■ % RELIGIOUS MALPRACTICES. Father Damasius Macoch, the Polish monk for whom the police of Germany, Austria, and Russia have been searching, has been arrested., and has confessed to the murder of his brother— a postman— and to the robbery of jewels from the famous image of of the Virgin and Child at the church at Czestochowa, Russian Poland. The jewels missing from the image, to which are ascribed miraculous powers, and which is visited annually by some 300,000 Poles, are stated (according to the Daily Mail's Vienna correspondent) to be worth £600,000. The body of the monk's brother was found inside a sofa which had been thrown into the River Warta. His widow, wilh whom the monk disappeared, has also been arrested. In his confession Macoch says that he enticed his brother into an underground cell. There he gave him drugged wine, struck him on the head, and then hastily confessed him. \fter granting him full absolution he strangled him with both hands. iThe arrested monk hah volunteered a statement respecting alleged malpractices in the iCzestochow a Monastery, to which he was attached. He says that of the jewels sewn in the Virgin's robe many were not genuine. The monks had disposed of the original gems and sub&tiuited artificial stones long asjo, as he discovered when he attempted lo sell them. H& says that the monks regularly appropriated the votive offerings of the pilgrims. He himself had taken hundreds and squandered the proceeds on his sister-in-law. H As a result of the revelations the monastery is occupied by the military, and a thorough search is being made behind walls, under floors, and in the garden in the hope of discovering the real jewels. An incalculable number of pilgrims have visited the shrine in the lafct 600 years — the image has been at Caestochowa since 1382 — and the innumerable gifts included priceless offerings from popes, emperors, and kings.