It was stolen almost 30 years ago. The priceless monument returns to Poland

On Monday, the Polish embassy in Paris held a ceremony of handing over to the Polish side a historic monstrance that was stolen in 1997 from a church in Moskorzewo in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. Representatives of the French police officially handed over the valuable item, which will soon return to the country.

As charge d'affaires Wiesław Tarka, acting ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Paris, emphasized, the case is of great importance for the Polish cultural heritage. This is a special opportunity for me to emphasize how important the restitution of missing and illegally exported works of art is for Poland, which is conducted and supervised by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in cooperation with Polish diplomatic missions. Polish efforts to restitute works lost from Poland are virtually constant, and the list of missing objects is unfortunately very long, he noted.

The key role of the French services

The recovery of the monument was possible thanks to the vigilance and professionalism of officers of the French Central Office for the Fight against Organized Crime and Art Smuggling (OCBC).

In the spring of this year, the Polish embassy received information that the monstrance from Moskorzewo was located in France. Police officers from the National Directorate of Judicial Police (DNPJ) in Nanterre recognized her at one of the shopping stands, using the Interpol database.

Philippe Guichard from the Department for Combating Organized and Specialized Crime emphasized the importance of international cooperation and modern tools. Interpol's database – PSYCHE – plays a fundamental role in identifying and finding stolen cultural goods, sometimes from many decades ago, he noted.

He also added that "this object of religious goldsmith's art, dating back to the 17th century, is an object of cult, a silent witness of Poland's religious and artistic history. Its return is essential for the healing of memory and the administration of justice. Thanks to joint efforts, it is finally returning to its place after almost 30 years of absence."

Monstrance from Moskorzewo

Counselor for the restitution of cultural property, Tomasz Śliwiński from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, recalled that the openwork and gold-decorated monstrance was stolen on the night of July 14-15, 1997, from the parish church in Moskorzewo. Then, only this monstrance fell victim to thieves, which indicates the purposefulness of their intentions and the value of the monument itself. From preserved sources we know that the monstrance in Moskorzewo was already in the first half of the 19th century - said a representative of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The recovered monument will soon return to Poland. The representative of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage also thanked the OCBC officers, represented by Nathalie Chanvallon, for their involvement in the case.