Church Bell Stolen During Holy Week

“We had a stainless steel cable on it, and we'd pull it down right in here,” says parishioner Philip Marchand as he tugs on an invisible rope. He normally rings the bell before each service at Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church. That was before someone swiped their hundred-year-old church bell.

“You can hear it in Grand Bay, all over Grand Bay, made a good sound,” says Marchand.

It happened sometime between Palm Sunday and Thursday night's service.

“I spotted that bell tower, no bell up there,” says Marchand. It was a heavy heist. Church goers believe more than one person used a ladder and ropes to steal the 250 pound brass bell.

“To do this at night on the heights they were working with, I don't want to call it courage but it was almost on the edge of ridiculous what they got out of it,” says parishioner David Parillo.

Parishioners say the bell came from a schooner ship and was donated to the church in 1924. It was moved 50 years later when the church moved from Old Pascagoula Road to where it is today along Highway 188. Father Warren Wall says they'll have to worship without it.

“It will kind of be a very traditional we're hoping not for that long if we can retrieve the bell,” says Wall. The irony of this theft taking place on the Christian Holy Week isn't lost on these parishioners but like Jesus, they are willing to forgive.

“We'd just like to get it back, somehow or another there won't be no questions asked, just bring it back to us,” says Marchand. The church is also offering a reward for information leading to the bell's return.