Bone theft

SOUTH SIDE — A man was charged Monday evening with one count of burglary, just hours after he broke into a South Side chapel and stole religious relics and a priest’s boots, authorities said.

Ricky Anderson, 42, of the 10200 block of South Forrest Avenue, Chicago, was taken into custody at 2:30 p.m. Monday, near the chapel of St. John de la Salle Catholic Church, 10212 S. Vernon Ave., where the burglary occurred less than an hour before, a Chicago police spokesman said.

While Anderson was stealing brass candleholders, a pair of boots and bones believed to be those of a saint, a priest startled him, causing him to flee, authorities said.

Anderson was arrested a short time later, wearing the boots, authorities said. The priest positively identified him, the police spokesman said.

Rather odd choices taking boots and a relic, maybe he was a pious thief?

Tangentially I was thinking that the Vatican should create an SQL (Sacramental Query Language) database tracking all known first degree relics. This would be pretty cool since you could enter the name of a saint and find out where all of their relics are. And of course you would submit the request via a relic query.