NORTHAMPTON — It’s an Easter miracle.
A St. Francis of Assisi statue that went missing a little over a week ago was discovered peeking out of a white trash bag on church property Sunday morning, and is now back in its rightful place.
After significant worry and outreach on social media, the approximately 3-foot-tall stone figurine is back on a pedestal outside the now-empty St. Mary of the Assumption Church on Elm Street.
St. Francis was a medieval nobleman who relinquished all his earthly belongings and was a strong advocate for animals and the natural world. He was named the patron saint of ecology by Pope John Paul II in 1979.
His statue in Northampton was first noticed missing the morning of March 18.
And the story of its homecoming is one for the books.
Janel Jorda, 49, of Northampton said she felt moved to search for the statue after attending an 8 a.m. Easter Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church at 99 King St.
“It was the oddest, strangest thing,” Jorda said.
The Rev. Francis Reilly, the parish’s pastor, spoke of the missing statue during his sermon, Jorda said, and she just had this feeling that if she drove over to St. Mary’s, she would find St. Francis. So when Mass ended, Jorda turned to her partner Karla Youngblood, 54, and suggested they take a quick trip.
“I just had this feeling. And we drove over and I parked the car and I walked around,” she said. “And there he was sticking out of a white garbage bag.”
The bag was sitting near protective fencing, at the rear right side of the church, she said.
Jorda said she and Youngblood were “bowled over” by the sight. They cleaned the statue and carried it back to the pedestal, then rushed back to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton to tell Reilly.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she recalled saying. “I found St. Francis.”
Reilly was equally shocked.
“It was like Mary Magdalene telling Peter that the Lord was risen from the dead,” Reilly said. “Kind of like an Easter miracle in daily life.”
Jorda’s takeaway: “You gotta have faith, I guess.”
Stephanie McFeeters can be reached at smcfeeters@gazettenet.com.