To compound the crime he also took a stone out of the homemade shrine in which the statue stood

To compound the crime, he also took a stone out of the homemade shrine in which the statue stood.It didn't take long for the Gregori family to spot the theft since the replacement statue, was badly chipped. The police soon linked the incident to the Bolognese pilgrims, and within hours a highway patrol - lights flashing and sirens blazing - had pulled their coach over on the main Rome-Milan motorway near Arezzo.One by one the passengers were asked to open their bags, until eventually Father Aldo produced the statue of his own accord saying he had taken it with the assent of the Gregori family - a story the Gregoris vigorously deny.Theft has been a failing of Italian Catholics ever since the city of Venice stole the body of St Mark from Alexandria in the 8th century. But he took the next best thing, a copy blessed by the Pope's special adviser on miracles, Cardinal Andrzej Deskur, from the garden of the Gregori family which first reported the miraculous weeping. That certainly explains why he was in Civitavecchia at the weekend, together with a 50-strong group of pilgrims from Bologna, to venerate the plaster statue of the Madonna that hit the headlines last year after it was seen weeping tears of human blood.And maybe it also explains why, on seeing a copy of the statue in a shrine in the owners' garden, the good Monsignor simply picked it up, put an imitation in its place and walked off with it stashed away in a bag.Yesterday the city of Civitavecchia, along with the Catholic hierarchy in Bologna, was squirming with embarrassment at the news that a 73-year- old cleric had apparently committed an act of larceny in the name of religious veneration.Admittedly, Monsignor Rosati did not filch the original weeping Madonna, which sits in a special chapel in the local church behind a screen of bullet-proof glass. ANDREW GUMBEL Rome Monsignor Aldo Rosati has always had a weakness for relics of the Virgin Mary.

They said they would consider his request to be granted full freedom to travel to Austria.. Indeed, his successful entry to the country was by car from neighbouring Germany, from which he was waved through by a border guard who barely bothered to look at his passport.Government officials yesterday played down Mr Habsburg's unauthorised visit, which they admitted they had been powerless to prevent. "I also have no intention of calling into question [the fact that Austria is now] a Republic."Felix Habsburg was less than three years old when his father, Emperor Karl I, was forced to step down and go into exile following defeat in the First World War and the dismembering of the Austro-Hungarian empire that followed.In the almost 80 years since, he has lived in Portugal, Belgium, the United States and, most recently, Mexico. In all that time, he has only been permitted to return to Austria once, for three days in 1989, to attend the funeral of his mother, Zita.

The original law banning Habsburg family members from entering Austria was passed at a time when there were still many in the country who would have supported a restoration of the monarchy and for many years Felix and his two older brothers lived in hope that they would one day receive the call.After the Second World War, however, most members of the family - most significantly Karl's oldest son and heir, Otto - abandoned such dreams and, in return for renouncing any claim to the throne, or properties, were allowed to visit whenever they wanted.Unlike his brother Otto, who went on to become a prominent member of the European Parliament, Felix Habsburg never signed the renunciation and even yesterday said he still had no intention of doing so.Although he never agreed on the ban, Mr Habsburg had little choice but to obey it until Austria's membership of the EU last year led to a relaxing its border controls with countries to the west. ADRIAN BRIDGE Central Europe Correspondent Having successfully defied a ban on entering his native land, Felix Habsburg, the youngest son of the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, yesterday called on the government in Vienna to lift all restrictions on his freedom to return home.Accompanied by his lawyers, Mr Habsburg, now 79 and the most senior member of the family never to have renounced any claim to the imperial throne, declared that since joining the European Union at the beginning of last year, Austria no longer had the right to bar him from the country.But he was quick to dash any hopes diehard monarchists may have had that he was launching a bid for a Habsburg comeback."I have no intention of becoming active politically I am too old for that," he said. He accepted that the federation has yet to create a defence ministry or merge the rival Croat and Muslim armies.Meanwhile, in Sarajevo, Bosnian Serb police set fire to their station, fired pistols in the air and threw hand grenades in a drunken departure from the suburb of Ilidza yesterday.Civilians ducked behind cars and French Nato troops crouched with weapons ready as a line of cars full of raucous Serb police drove around the town centre waving a Serb flag.Muslim firemen from nearby Hrasnica, escorted by Nato, quickly put out the station fire.Other fires also burned in Ilidza, one of two Sarajevo suburbs yet to be transferred from Serb to Muslim-Croat control under the terms of the Dayton accord.. A large group of Inkatha supporters outside the court chanted and danced protests, near a group of ANC demonstrators.