First prayed, then stolen: in an Allgäu chapel, after a prayer, a thief swapped a golden cross on the altar for a lower quality one he had brought with him. The other believers in the chapel in Waltenhofen (Oberallgäu district) assumed that the man had taken the original with him to restore it, the police said on Monday. It was only after the theft on Sunday afternoon that it became apparent that this was not the case. The police estimated the value of the original at around 800 euros. How much the new cross is worth is not yet known. “We can’t explain it to ourselves,” said the director of the seminar house to which the chapel belongs. “The greater value of the cross is actually the ideal.”