Salt Lake diocese leaders offer $1,000 reward for return of stolen relic

SALT LAKE CITY — Leaders of Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City offered a $1,000 reward Friday as they hoped someone might have information about a relic stolen from the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

Father Martin Diaz said the theft of the relic happened sometime between roughly 6:20 a.m. and 7 a.m. Wednesday as the thief left behind a broken reliquary.

“The actual relic is a bone fragment of Saint Mary Magdalene,” Fr. Diaz said during an interview with KSL TV. “When he tried to take it off the shelf—it takes two people—he dropped it, it broke open and inside the glass case is the small pyx that has the relic in it, and that’s what he took.”
The relic, he said, held deep significance to the cathedral and diocese.

“For us, it’s a connection of 2,000 years of Christianity,” Fr. Diaz said. “(Mary Magdalene) is the person who first saw the resurrected Jesus and announced it to the others, so she’s the patron saint of this cathedral. This is the only cathedral that has her as a patron saint for sure in the United States and probably the world.”

Leaders of the diocese did not believe this was an act of vandalism and instead suspected theft was the only motive.

“He was looking for something to steal, something he thought would be valuable, and got in over his head,” Fr. Diaz said. As Salt Lake City Police investigated, Fr. Diaz hoped the $1,000 reward for information leading to the return of the relic would potentially hold some weight.

He urged anyone with information to contact him at 602-318-5555.

“It would make a lot of people happy,” Fr. Diaz said. “It could make a lot of people—just prayers answered.”