STOLE RELIC RECOVERED.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 255, 28 October 1907, Page 2

STOLE RELIC RECOVERED.

A CAMORRISTS' CHARM. Since February last the inhabitants of Altavilla, Irpina : near Avelhno, have been in mourning over the mysterious theft of the miraculous blood of San Pellegrino, which was preserved in a reliquary in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. San Pellegrino's relics were but one among some twenty-eight similar hoards 01 martyrs' blood kept at divers sanctutaries in the Neapolitan provinces, which, so long as the Bourbons held sway, used to liquefy and boil periodically, as the famous blood of St. Januarius continues to do to-day. Many suspects have been arrested m vain, when recently Marshall Capezzuti, Camorra, chanced to discover proof that the relic had been stolen by four Camofrists implicated in the notorious Ctiocolo murders. The exact whereabouts of San Pellegrino's blood remained, however, a mystery till the Festival of the Assumption, when, acting on secret information, Capezzuti, with half a dozen carabinieri, broke into the dwelling of a Cairiorrist exconvict named Paesani, in the city of Naples, and found the sacred anipolla hidden under the petticoats of a gaudily-dressed image of the Virgin Mary. / It transpires that members of the Camorra were in the habit of making a pilgrimage to this private oratory to invoke heavenly aid on their criminal enterprises. They venerated the blood relic as an infallible charm against molestation by the police. To-day (August 20th) the Mayor, parish priest, and churchwardens or Altavilla Irpina have gone to Naples to reclaim the treasure, while the municipality has telegraphed to the Vatican for the Pope's special benediction upon Marshal Oapezzuti.