French police hand over to Poland a 17th-century monstrance stolen in 1997 — RMF24

In Paris, representatives of the French police handed over to the Polish side a 17th-century monstrance that was stolen in 1997 from a parish church in Moskorzew, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. The ceremony took place at the Polish Embassy in France. The artifact is expected to return to Poland soon.

As RMF24 reports, the monstrance was stolen on the night of July 14–15, 1997. According to Tomasz Śliwiński, an adviser to Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the thieves took only this item at the time, which may indicate the targeted nature of the theft and the value of the artifact. Surviving sources show that the monstrance was already in Moskorzew in the first half of the 19th century.

The artifact was found in France

In the spring of this year, the Polish Embassy received information that the stolen monstrance was in France. Law enforcement officers from the French National Directorate of Judicial Police in Nanterre identified it at one of the trade stands using an Interpol database.

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The return of the item involved the French Central Office for Combating Organized Crime and Smuggling of Works of Art, Polish and French law enforcement officers, as well as Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The second restitution from France this year

Wiesław Tarka, Poland’s chargé d’affaires in Paris, stressed the importance of returning works of art illegally taken out of the country. This is already the second ceremony this year for the handover to Poland of a stolen and illegally exported cultural object found in France. In February, the Polish side recovered a 15th-century manuscript stolen from a library in Wrocław.