IN RUSSIAN POLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 219, 24 December 1910, Page 8

IN RUSSIAN POLAND.

RELIGIOUS MALPRACTICES. Father Damasius Macoeli, the Polish monk for whom the police of Germany, Austria and Russia have been searching, has been arrested ,and has confessed to the murder of his postman—and to the robbery of jewels from the famous image of the Virgin and Child vat the church at Czestochowa, Russian Poland. The jewels missing from the image, to which are ascribed miraculous powers, and which is visited annually by some 300,000 Poles, are stated (according to the London Daily Mail's Vienna correspondent) to be worth £6ooyooo. The body of the monk's brother was found inside a sofa which had been thrown into the River Warta. His I widow, with whom the monk disappeared, has also been arrested.

In his confession Macoch says that he enticed his brother into an underground cell. There he gave him drugged wine, struck ihim on the head, and then hastily 'confessed him.. After granting him full affeolution he strangled him with both hands. The arrested monk has volunteered a statement respecting alleged malpractices in the Czestochowa Monastery, to which he was attached. He says that of the jewels sewn in the Virgin's robe many were not genuine. The monks had dis-' posed of the original gems and substituted artificial stones long ago, as he discovered when he attempted to sell them. He says that the monks regularly appropriated the votive offerings of the pilgrims. He himself had taken hundreds and squandered the proceeds on his sister-in-law.

As a result of the revelations the monastery is occupied toy the military, and a thorough search is being made behind _ walls, under floors, and in the garden in the hope of discovering the real jewels.

An incalculable -number of pilgrims have visited the shrine in the last GQO years—the image has been at Czestodiowa since 1382—and the .innumerable gifts included priceless offerings from popes, emperors and kings.