Historic Bell Stolen From St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco
This past Sunday parishioners at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco discovered a big part of their church history was missing when they left 11 a.m. mass.
A 5,300-pound church bell, mounted on a concrete slab in the garden area, had disappeared and no one could remember when it was last seen.
“We cannot replace this historic and valuable item,” said George Wesolek, director of Communications and Public Policy for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, in a recent release. “Hopefully, the police will recover it, and we can put it back in its rightful place as a memory of the Catholic Church of San Francisco.”
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The theft is still under investigation, and Police Inspector Brian Danker told The Christian Post Tuesday the incident isn’t something to be taken lightly. He said people are “stealing brass railings, copper gutters, chalices from churches, bells, whatever they can chop up and take to recycling yards that take brass and copper.” Not just gold and silver, but also industrial metals, have skyrocketed in price over the past few years.
He called thieves like this “metal monsters.” They typically target homes under construction with copper wirings. If they can get away with it, the price is good. The estimated replacement value for the bell is $75,000.
Still, locals and church parishioners wonder how a bell larger than The Liberty Bell could be carted off so easily. Danker says the theft would have had to have been done with a “major hydraulic lift.”
The church is surrounded by high rises, condos and apartment complexes. Danker says he has been knocking on many of the doors at these residences hoping to find someone who might have seen something. But so far no one is talking.
Wesolek told CP that “a lot of people are shocked” and concerned because the bell is a historic religious artifact with a long history in the Catholic Church.
The bell was first installed in St. Mary’s Cathedral in 1889. It was ordered by Duriham Carrigan as a gift for the cathedral, and shipped directly by steam train from the McShane Bell Foundry of Baltimore, Md.
It was a part of the church until 1962 when a fire destroyed the original cathedral. The cathedral was rebuilt in its current location on Van Ness Street, and the bell moved along with the congregation. It was placed on wooden blocks in the garden, where it had been for 40 years until its disappearance last week.
The bell theft at St. Mary’s is not an isolated incident. Last weekend, thieves gutted several thousand dollars’ worth of copper from a building owned by Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory. The week before, a $10,000 bronze plaque honoring Supervisor Harvey Milk was stolen from a metro station stop.
Wesolek said the “police are taking it very seriously” and have put together a special investigations unit to look into such thefts. So far there are no leads in the St. Mary’s case, but the church said it will offer a reward to anyone who is able to find the bell.
