Missing tabernacle doors found - not stolen

4:00 pm on 22 December 2011

The bronzed tabernacle doors that went missing from the Catholic Cathedral in Christchurch last week have been found

The pair of half-metre-high doors, which are worth $185,000, were put in safekeeping after the church was badly damaged in the February earthquake.

Last week the chair of the cathedral's management board pleaded for the person who took the doors to return them.

But in a statement released on Thursday, the diocesan financial adviser, Paddy Beban, says staff found them at the back of a container packed with other furniture retrieved from the cathedral.

He says the person who moved the doors obviously did not realise what they were moving.