Stolen Baroque statue of St. Ludmila returns to Czechia after 30 years

A stolen Baroque statue of St. Ludmila has been returned to Czechia after three decades. The wooden sculpture was discovered at an auction in Germany and was officially handed over on Wednesday at the Ministry of Culture in Prague, in the presence of representatives of the National Heritage Institute, Czech police, and the State Criminal Office of Baden-Württemberg. The artwork will now return to the Diocese of Hradec Králové. Thanks to international cooperation, several stolen cultural artifacts have been successfully repatriated to Czechia in the past five years. However, more than ten thousand stolen altars, statues, and other liturgical objects remain missing.