An American man discovered on a trip to Italy that his family's old relic of St Pantaleon, the patron saint of physicians, actually belonged to the church in Montauro, Italy, so agreed to return it.
The statue of the saint had spent years in Ed Nader's great-grandmother's closet.
Missing Saint Pantaleon statue found in South Philly (photos) https://t.co/wBHOEeiJ2j pic.twitter.com/SX5NgycnQl
— NewsWorks (@NewsWorksWHYY) July 26, 2017
In 1946, a group of Montauro parishioners brought the statue to Boston, Massachusetts in the USA, to be used in a parade on the saint's feast day.
According to Nader, for an unknown reason, they left it with his great-grandmother Maria Concetta Carito in Philadelphia and never returned to retrieve it.
Saint Pantaleon is a saint from the third and fourth centuries who is still popularly celebrated in Italy. In religious fashion, the statue shows the saint dying in agony while tied to a tree.
Nader's wife told Newsworks: "I never questioned it. It's just, like - yes - that's what we do. We send it back."
