The Associated Press is reporting on the theft which was spotted on Sunday by a visitor to the Cathedral. The cloth was housed in a glass container which had been pried from the base of a sculpture commemorating the pope’s visit to Cologne in 1980.

“Although the material value is low, the spiritual value is a lot bigger,” said Gerd Bachner, the cathedral’s provost, in a police statement.

Bachner is urging the thief to return the relic.

This is not the first time a thief stole a relic from the late pontiff.

In 2014, thieves broke into a church in San Pietro, Italy, where a piece of the bloody cassock the saint was wearing in 1981 during an assassination attempt was housed. The thieves stole the relic, which was eventually found in a nearby garage.

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