Oklahoma man arrested, accused of smashing Subiaco altar and stealing relics

An Oklahoma man was arrested Thursday, accused of smashing Subiaco Abbey’s antique marble altar with a sledgehammer and stealing boxes containing relics more than 1,500 years old, according to the Logan County Sheriff’s Office. 

The relic boxes, called reliquaries, had been sealed into the altar and contained items associated with Saints Boniface, Tiberius, Benedict and others. The items were recovered after the suspect returned to the monastery and monks discovered a reliquary box in the suspect’s truck, according to a report on the Subiaco website. 

The suspect, Jerrid Farnam of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, smashed the altar with a sledgehammer and other tools, creating a large hole, according to the police report. The monastery stripped the altar of its “signs of joy and gladness” and are using a portable altar while “provisions are made for the repairs,” the monastery said on its website. 

The report from the sheriff’s department said Farnham also “messed with” the tabernacle near the altar but did not damage it. 

The monastery’s Facebook page describes that part of the ordeal a little differently. 

“The Sheriff reported that the man had wanted to break into the tabernacle but had looked up at the statue of Mary and decided he couldn’t do that to her,” the Facebook post says. 

Farnam has been charged with public intoxication, theft of property, criminal mischief in the first degree, breaking or entering and residential burglary. 

Subiaco Abbey and Academy is a Bendictine Monastery and boarding school founded in 1877 in Logan County, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.