A skull was recently returned from northern Germany to Vienna’s historic St Stephen’s Cathedral in Austria, decades after it was stolen by a tourist.
The eerie parcel, addressed to the cathedral, was opened by archivist Franz Zehetner, who was startled to find a human skull inside,.along with a letter of confession.
In the note, an elderly man from Germany admitted that he had taken the skull nearly 60 years ago during a guided tour of the cathedral’s catacombs, which house the remains of about 11,000 people buried in the 18th century.
Now nearing the end of his life, the remorseful tourist said he wanted to make peace with his conscience by returning what he had taken in his youth.
“It was touching that someone would wish to make amends for an act of youthful exuberance,” Zehetner told the BBC, adding that the man had kept the skull carefully over the years instead of discarding it.
The identity of the skull’s original owner remains unknown, but it has since been respectfully reburied beneath the cathedral.
