Monstrance, Lunette Containing Body of Christ Returned to Parish Church in Gabon

On Sunday, September 13, Fr. Benedict announced that the Church had been desecrated saying, “Our Parish has just been stabbed in the heart. It is very serious and we have been hit really hard.” 

Narrating the desecration, Fr. Benedict had said, “An unidentified young man, drunk or drugged, infiltrated the grotto and broke in two the exposed Blessed Sacrament. Worst still, he took the monstrance and the lunette of the Body of Christ in his bag.”

“All this happened in the presence of a lady and some Christians who were praying and who observed the incident without reporting to us,” the Priest had narrated, adding, “One of the Church wardens asked the young man to leave the place, without knowing what he had in his bag.”

In his September 15 statement, Fr. Benedict said, “Thank God for the return home of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.”

Meanwhile, in Nigeria’s Makurdi Diocese, Bishop Wilfred Anagbe has suspended pastoral services at St. Peter’s Low-Level Parish indefinitely following acts of desecration at the Parish.

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According to the Catholic Star Newspaper of the Diocese, “The suspension comes after two sacrilegious attacks on the Parish on the 12^th August and 13th September this year by yet-to-be identified persons.”

“The chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the main Church building was broken into, the sacred specie of the Most Holy Eucharist was desecrated and sacred vessels looted,” the leadership of the Diocese of Makurdi has further reported Tuesday, September 15.

In the report, Bishop Anagbe is quoted as saying, “The closure is to enable us to adequately prepare for penance required by law in order to repair the injury this profanation has done to the sacred body of Christ.” 

He adds that pastoral activities in the Parish shall resume after “a proportional satisfaction is made with regards to this sacrilege and we are also fully guaranteed of a better security outfit and structure for the parish in accordance with canonical requirements.”

Once the requirements are met, Bishop Anagbe has said, the Parish community will pray “a novena of reparation to be concluded with a rite of atonement in line with diocesan liturgical norms.”