Tuesday, March 17, 2009

News Appeal for return of irreplaceable parish records

The parish priest of Louth village, Fr Sean Quinn, has appealed for the return of parish records going back to the nineteenth century which were stolen from his house.

Fr Quinn made the appeal to the thieves who broke into his house and took the documents from the safe while he was out saying Saturday evening Mass.

While the documents are completely worthless to the people who took them, they are quite irreplaceable and record births, deaths, marriages, baptisms and confirmations in Louth going right back to 1832.

The priest said that some of the information for parish events between 1830 and 1900 had been copied onto a computer, most of it had not, and the stolen documents are the only copies in existence.

Ironically, the only money the thieves got was a sum of less than €100 which was also in the safe.

While a filing cabinet was ransacked, nothing is believed to have been taken from it.

It is believed that the burglars gained access to Fr Quinn’s house by having got a child to climb a ladder, enter through a window and then open the front door.

Gardaí suspect that a ladder was used to get the child up to a window.

Fr Quinn said he believed that at least three men must have been involved to lift the safe.

"It was locked and it would have to be cut open with a blow torch or something like that," he added.

The break-in happened during the short window of opportunity - approximately half an hour - while he was saying Mass in the nearby church.

A Renault Trafic van was later reported as having been acting suspiciously in the area and may have been used by the robbers.

Fr Quinn said he would be very happy to get back the priceless documents, which are useless to the thieves.

“Hopefully, when the thieves realise what's inside the safe, they will arrange for the documents to be left back, which is all we want”.
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(Source: CNA)