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Friday, 21 November 2008



Bulgarians Stole St. George’s Relics from a Serbian Monastery



Balkan Travellers   

25 February 2008 | Two Bulgarians were found guilty by a Serbian court for stealing the relics of St. George from the Vracevsnica Monastery near the town of Kragujevac.

Locals claim that the precious remains were brought from Jerusalem by German, the late Patriarch of the Serb Orthodox Church.

The robbery took place on October 13, 2007, when the two Bulgarians stole a silver box containing the relics from the church’s altar.

In the past two decades robberies of churches and museums and looting of archaeological sites became widespread in Bulgaria, as the state in transition was unable to control neither the traffic of antiquities through its borders nor the illegal trade with artefacts within the country.

Now that Bulgaria is an EU member state and its border controls are tightened, it seems looters and robbers are trying to keep their share in the market by concentrating on robberies in the neighbouring countries.

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