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Dead Thief's Family Returns Church Bell
KELCYRE, Albania (Reuters![Reuters]() ) -
The family of a man who died in a car crash a few years after stealing the bell of an Orthodox church in southern Albania has returned the bell saying the theft doomed the robber.
The family gave the bell to dairy farmer Peco Ndoni, a devout Orthodox Christian from the village where the bell was stolen in 1997 and asked him to make sure it was returned to the church.
"They believed it was precisely because he brought down an object sacred to God that their relative was punished with the loss of his life," Ndoni said.
"They hoped that returning it would somehow relieve their sorrow for the loss of their relative and redeem him," he added.
Before it can take back its place at the church, the bronze bell needs work to restore a missing piece, cut out to see whether the metal mix contained gold.
Since the collapse of communism in 1990, Albanian treasure hunters have stolen bronze church bells thinking they contained gold, widely believed to make the bell ring louder into a longer distance.
Bells have also been stolen simply because they were old and worth a lot to antique collectors abroad.
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