Robbers rammed a car into a medieval cathedral in southwest France early Monday, breaking windows and sawing through metal bars to grab silver chalices and other irreplaceable church treasures, local authorities said. The gang had tied a tree trunk to the front of the car they used to smash through a cathedral door in the town of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, municipal official Laurent Paris told AFP. The Romanesque-Gothic edifice is a historical monument and was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1998 as part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. Once inside, the thieves helped themselves to some of the cathedral’s many chalices, crosses and other ceremonial objects, much of it gold, as well as a 18th-century nativity scene and a collection of priestly garments, including a rare cape donated by the 16th century King Francis I. The treasures had been kept in a chapel, behind a steel grid whose “bars were sawn through,” Paris said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robbers rammed a car into a medieval cathedral in southwest France early Monday, breaking windows and sawing through metal bars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n